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GEORGE WASHINGTON 

From the painting by Gilbert Stuart, owned by the Boston Athenaeum 



OUR NATION 
IN THE BUILDING 



BY 



HELEN NICOLAY 

Author of "Personal Traits of 
Abraham Lincoln," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED 
WITH PORTRAITS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1916 






Copyright, 1916, by 
The Century Co. 



Publiihed, October, 1916 







TO THOSE WHO WILL MAKE HISTORY 



PREFACE 

It occurs to the writer that we take our history 
too seriously, as if it were a medicine rather than a 
cordial, and that a little volume written in cheerful dis- 
regard of established rules for history-books may find 
a place upon the bookshelves, perhaps even in the hands 
of a few readers. 

Such a volume must of necessity be sketchy, not 
strictly chronological, and cannot pretend to tell even 
the larger part about, anything. It cares less for dates 
than for happenings, less for specific happenings than 
for movements and currents of feeling. When forced 
to choose between picturesquely typical incidents and a 
conscientious narrative of dry fact, it gravitates shame- 
lessly toward the picturesque. Its one effort is to es- 
tablish a connection between the soil, — our soil, — and 
those volatile dates that are forever escaping us, and 
names which mean less to us than the dust of the road. 

For American history " as she is taught " in the 
schools is certainly no pastime for the average Ameri- 
can, old or young. It is frankly a bore, made up of 
dates that refuse to stay memorized, and names triple- 
plated against imagination and as hard to connect with 
real life as it is to believe that mummies in a museum 
ever breathed and walked. Those shriveled brown 



PREFACE 

bundles labeled with processions of meaningless sylla- 
bles after this fashion: " U-ser-te-sen, son of Amen- 
em-het I, XXth Dynasty, circa 2000 b. c." seem about 
the deadest things in civilization; yet we are assured 
that once they were palpitating flesh and spirit, swayed 
by the same emotions that stir the girl and youth who 
drift by with eyes only for each other, or the graybeard 
who pauses before the mummy case to gaze wistfully 
across its barrier of glass and silence. 

The author honestly believes that the little she has 
been able to tell between the covers of this book is 
true, — that while it may not be history in the accepted 
sense, there is not one word of fiction in it. Her rea- 
son for writing it, and her hope in publishing it is that 
it may serve to emphasize the fact that American his- 
tory is not mummy-like after all, but full of inspiring 
incident, and brimming with human nature. 

She wishes to express her thanks to the authors of 
the hundred and more books she has consulted in mak- 
ing her little composite sketch, as well as to the friends 
of ripe experience who have generously opened for her 
their treasure-houses of memory. To beg pardon of 
one and all if she has appropriated too much of their 
labor to her own use, or if upon the other hand, she 
appears to have disregarded it merely to state her own 
opinion. 

Above all, she wishes to assure them that she is per- 
sonally and permanently their debtor for many hours 
of delightful instruction. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I An Idol's Successor 3 

II Democrat or Imperialist 28 

III The Map and the Shuttlecock Prov- 

ince 46 

IV A Baleful Don Quixote 63 

V An Amazing War 82 

VI The Opening West 108 

VII One Born Out of Season 124 

VIII A Democratic Despot 143 

IX Giants in Congress 172 

X As Others Saw Us 201 

XI Roads of the Promised Land .... 222 

XII The Red Menace .245 

XIII Women in a Free Country .... 264 

XIV Religion in a Republic 287 

XV Schools and Inventions 313 

XVI A Rollicking Campaign 336 

XVII America's War of Conquest .... 357 

XVIII $20,000 OR $200,000 A Year 384 

XIX Sentiment Among the People . . . 406 

XX Suffrage and Reform 426 

XXI News and Books 44^ 

^XII The Seers and the Prophets .... 471 

XXIII The Sweep of the Years 500 

Index • 5^3 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

George Washington Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Thomas Jefferson 24 

Alexander Hamilton 104 

John C, Calhoun 152 

William Lloyd Garrison 184 

Daniel Webster 216 

Robert Fulton 232 

Winfield Scott 280 

Horace Mann 328 

Henry Clay 360 

Horace Greeley 392 

John C. Fremont 440 

William Cullen Bryant 456 

Samuel F. B. Morse 472 

Abraham Lincoln 488 

Maps Showing Density of Population, i8og and 1850 56 



OUR NATION 
IN THE BUILDING 



OUR NATION 
IN THE BUILDING 

CHAPTER I 

AN idol's successor 

THE Articles of Confederation, adopted by our 
Continental Congress in 1777, appear in re- 
trospect more like a travesty on government 
than the deliberate, earnest work of reasoning men. 
The patriots of that day were too deeply moved by 
principles to see the absurdity of the means by which 
they sought to enforce them. Congress, the central 
authority during the Revolution, was allowed to impose 
taxes, but was forbidden to collect them. It could de- 
clare war, but was powerless to enlist a soldier. And 
being made thoroughly helpless and penniless, it was 
required to pay armies it had no right to call into being. 
Comic operas, but not nations, flourish upon such 
foundations. 

War's overshadowing concern held the different 
parts of the country together while it lasted, but true to 
the law which decrees that virtue shall ebb and flow in 
nations as in men, nature saw to it that peace was fol- 
lowed by speedy reaction. Intent upon reaping local 
benefits, the sections became quarrelsome neighbors, 
each clamoring in a different tongue for its own rights 
and privileges. The East talked of fisheries and tim- 
ber ; the South of tobacco and cotton ; the opening West 

3 



4 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

had needs and interests to which the others were deaf 
and blind. A few years of such discord brought the 
new country to a pass where it was equally difficult 
to keep order at home or treaties abroad. National 
finances, long precarious, reached the vanishing point, 
then disappeared. The army withered to a skeleton of 
fewer than a hundred men. Legislators, elected to the 
shadowy honor of seats in a Congress without real 
power, showed small interest in its meetings. It had 
been difficult to get together a quorum to ratify the 
treaty of peace with Great Britain. The attendance 
grew less and less ; then only two members appeared ; 
finally only one met with the clerk. That faithful offi- 
cer wrote his last entry in the journal, closed the book, 
and without being formally adjourned, the Continental 
Congress also faded from sight. 

The new nation seemed doomed to die of its own 
vital principle, — liberty; but fear of disunion, or, 
rather, of the consequences of disunion, roused the 
States to their folly. Disunion meant almost certain 
reconquest by England, with the sacrifice of every- 
thing for which they had fought. Even before the 
shadowy Congress vanished into the land of ghosts, 
Virginia, leader among the States, asked that delegates 
be sent to a convention called to revise these Articles 
of Confederation under which time had proved that 
Americans could fight, but could not live peaceably 
together. With the exception of small, but truculent, 
Rhode Island, all responded, sending their best men, 
some of whom were already members of the old Con- 
gress. And this, it is only fair to say, accounted in 
part for its deserted halls and dwindling numbers. 

As the delegates rode toward Philadelphia through 
the young green of mid-May, 1787, the country looked 
very fair, — altogether too fair .to be given up without 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 5 

further struggle. They had three alternatives: dis- 
union, more amiable and brotherly efforts at popular 
government, or an American monarchy. Europe, 
watching eagerly, would welcome this last as a con- 
fession of failure only less absolute than disunion it- 
self. England and France stood ready to offer candi- 
dates from the house of Hanover and the house of 
Bourbon, their greed thinly veiled in assurances of 
friendship that were insults in disguise. 

Of one thing these Americans were sure: if it came 
to an American monarchy, they need not cross the sea 
to find a king. A man of their own number had been 
tested in temper and strength for more than a decade 
through war and the more quarrelsome years of peace. 
It was his tact and common sense that had saved them 
time and again while they tried to live under the opera- 
bouffe provisions of the Articles of Confederation. 
Like themselves, he was now riding soberly toward 
Philadelphia. A crowd met him and escorted him into 
the city with public honors, and he was made chairman 
of the convention. 

After the country decided that it was not yet ready 
to give up the experiment of popular government, he 
was elected President, and in due time, clad in his dark- 
brown suit of home manufacture, he took the oath of 
office, while prayers ascended and bells rang, and the 
budding Government put forth all the pomp and cere- 
mony it could muster to make his inauguration im- 
pressive. 

Then came eight years during which everything had 
to be determined, from homeliest details of govern- 
ment to questions of gravest moment. " I walk as it 
were on untrodden ground," the new President wrote, 
and being humble-minded as well as earnest, he asked 
help and advice from many, even from men much 



6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

younger than himself, with the winning apology: " I 
am troublesome. You must excuse me; ascribe it to 
friendship and confidence." 

The problems of his administration foreshadowed 
almost every issue that has since arisen to trouble an 
executive pillow. There were relations to be reestab- 
lished with the outside world; for though the States 
had boastfully cast off the yoke of Europe, they found 
themselves bound to it, now that war was over, by 
ties of memory no war could break, and dependent 
upon it, moreover, for tangible necessary supplies, like 
bricks to build into their houses, and dishes from which 
to eat their food. 

There were boundaries to be adjusted to the north 
and to the south. On the west was the vexed ques- 
tion of navigation of the Mississippi River. There 
was constant, nagging anxiety about expenses of gov- 
ernment ; there was among the people an unrest that did 
not stop short of actual rebellion ; there were humiliat- 
ing scandals in the President's official family ; and there 
was jealousy in all the various departments of govern- 
ment. 

States were jealous of encroachments upon their 
sovereign power; municipalities were fearful of losing 
one jot of local authority. The newly inaugurated 
Federal Government was tenacious of its dignity as 
representing all these collective units ; but among them- 
selves the three subdivisions of the Federal Government 
manoeuvered for place and power. The judiciary was 
busy establishing its functions and its new code of 
laws ; Congress and the executive experimented upon 
ways in which they could work together. The Senate 
showed no enthusiasm when the President and his sec- 
retary of war knocked at its door, expecting to take 
part in an executive session, and Washington went 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 7 

home vowing he would never place himself in that posi- 
tion again. The House, still less minded than the 
Senate to brook what it termed " interference," flatly 
refused to receive the popular Hamilton, secretary of 
the treasury, and hear his report on the public credit. 

Washington's Presidency saw the shaking together 
and adjustment of the whole complicated system; and 
how much its final success was due to his unemotional 
persistence in well-doing, we, his political descendants, 
can never know. He brought no v^'hirlwind enthusi- 
asm to the task, he was not over-sanguine; but con- 
vinced that the new system was " well worth a full and 
fair experiment," he enlisted in this, as he had in the 
Revolution, with all his heart and " for the war." 

Gifted above his fellows, it was with an endowment 
of endurance and calm common sense rather than with 
the fiery touch of genius. He must have had a very 
broad and impartial mind ; for even the impatience of 
those who differed with him testifies to this. He had a 
way most trying to men of quicker mental habits, like 
Jefferson, of never expressing approval on first hearing 
a plan, but of reserving judgment until he had thought 
it over. He had a capacity for continuous, grinding 
hard work, and this he in turn exacted from his 
subordinates; but he had also enough sympathy 
and imagination to understand that they might 
find such uninterrupted devotion to duty hard and 
trying. 

The training of his entire life had been toward self- 
mastery. Lessons of obedience in early military life, 
the loneliness of supreme command, and the great stake 
for which he played, — all tended to that end. He had 
been born with no talent for the trivialities of life, no 
grace of wit or social ease, and he was occupied with 
engrossing cares. His deafness, moreover, made it 



8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

impossible for him to take part in general conversation 
even at his own table, a circumstance that has unfor- 
tunately added to the gloom of the mental portrait be- 
queathed to posterity. We think of him as a man of 
stately presence, a little slow in his mental processes, 
but very just and very sure; a man almost dull in the 
monotony of his virtue, who lived on a plane of con- 
scious benevolence, holding resentments and kindly im- 
pulses alike in leash, ready to turn them in the direc- 
tion of his country's good. 

Yet there are hints that under this chilling calm 
glowed a furnace of emotions. In the intimacy of a 
portrait sitting he confessed to Gilbert Stuart that he 
was " passionate by nature," and he was really the per- 
son best fitted to know. The little girl who lived op- 
posite, and saw him daily with his two aides, all very 
correct in their laced hats and well-brushed coats, cross 
the street and start on their customary constitutional, 
wondered if the great man ever spoke or smiled; but 
Senator Ross, blundering upon a domestic scene soon 
after Edmund Randolph was dismissed from the cab- 
inet in disgrace, found Nelly Custis cowering " like a 
partridge " in a corner and the President's wife ** awe- 
struck," while he thundered, in answer to the question 
whether he had yet seen Randolph's pamphlet of vin- 
dication : " Yes, sir ; I have read every word, every 
letter, of it, and a — er scoundrel God Almighty never 
permitted to disgrace humanity ! " 

In writing home about one of the depressing Presi- 
dential dinners, which were indeed rather terrifying 
festivals, owing to the host's deafness and the de- 
meanor of most of the guests, who seemed to feel that 
they were assisting at some sort of national funeral, 
Mrs. Adams showed a gentler side of his nature. She 
told how Washington, with awkward and unavailing 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 9 

kindness, tried to dispel the gloom for her at least by- 
asking minutely after the health of members of her 
family ; and then, picking the plums from a cake, sent 
them with his compliments to " Master John." 

The stately ceremonies of birthday, New Year, and 
Fourth of July celebrations, the formality of his levees, 
and the way congregations lined up on Sundays out- 
side the church to make a lane through which he and 
his wife entered the sanctuary ahead of all the rest, 
grew partly out of the people's respect for him, partly 
out of what seemed to him and his advisers fitting to 
the high office of President of the United States. Dig- 
nity, not ostentation or display, was the aim. That 
neither ostentation nor display resulted, Chateaubriand, 
in America on his way to discover the Northwest Pas- 
sage, amply testified. His romantic conception of the 
American Cincinnatus had been shaken by his first 
sight of Washington, flashing by in a coach and four; 
but it was completely restored when he went to present 
his letter of introduction, and saw the simplicity of his 
dwelling, and that, far from being guarded by soldier 
or lackey, its door was opened by a decent serving- 
woman, who inquired his name, and, finding that she 
could not pronounce it, trustingly bade him enter and 
be seated while she went in search of her master. 

The President's cream-colored coach, with four, and 
on occasion even six, horses to it, and attendant serv- 
ants in livery, was nothing uncommon. That was still 
the custom among the well-to-do. Indeed, the 
wretched state of the roads, " rather marked out than 
made," rendered such turnouts a matter of prudence 
instead of pride. Like every other Virginian, Wash- 
ington was fond of horses; but the fleeting glimpses 
we have of his coach, and of his own figure on horse- 
back, grave and composed even when some misguided 



lo OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

admirer had dropped a laurel wreath upon his brow, 
indicate that the same handsome white animals served 
thriftily alike for saddle and draft. 

That laurel wreath must have been more vexing 
than pleasant to his sober tastes, and in the almost 
royal progress of his longer journeys he doubtless wel- 
comed an occasional greeting like the old Quaker's, 
" Friend Washington, we are pleased to see thee," 
as a relief from the customary adulation. On the 
other hand, when the Governor of Massachusetts, 
jealous for the rights of the commonwealth, developed 
a sudden " indisposition " to make the first call of 
ceremony upon a mere President of the United States, 
Washington stood upon his dignity, and brought the 
governor to his feet, albeit enveloped " in red baize " 
and protesting that he came at the risk of his life. 

Washington, in short, was a conscientious, earnest 
gentleman, striving with businesslike thoroughness to 
fulfil the will of God and the wishes of the majority. 
Every one of the sixty-nine electoral votes had been 
cast for him; and both from desire and the sense of 
duty he set himself the hard task, unfulfilled by him or 
any of his successors, of being President of the whole 
country, regardless of party. 

Already factions were showing themselves. To rep- 
resent these fairly, he chose for his cabinet four men 
who could not have differed more in character had he 
summoned them from the ends of the earth. For sec- 
retary of state he chose Jefferson, the ardent theorist 
who had done his country the service of formulating 
the Declaration of Independence, and was perhaps 
better known abroad than any^- American save the aged 
Franklin. For secretary of the treasury he called to 
him the phenomenal Hamilton, with the frame of a 
lad and the intellect of a giant, to whom it was given to 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR n 

perform miracles with an empty exchequer. The sec- 
retary of war was General Knox, large and showy, but, 
despite his pompous speech and grandly flourishing 
cane, a man of experience not only in battle, but in ad- 
ministering this same office under the Continental 
Congress. The attorney-general was Edmund Randolph, 
who proved of weaker moral fiber than the others. 

Since the first duty of the new Government was to 
bring the States into line after years of pulling asunder, 
the measures of Washington's administration were of 
necessity centralizing in their effect. Little things and 
large, from the ordering of his daily life to sending 
troops to crush the Whisky Insurrection in Pennsyl- 
vania, — without a battle, it is true, but at the cost of 
" invading " a sovereign State and imposing outside 
authority upon it, — stamped him a Federalist, roused 
the ire of the Republicans, and forever put an end to 
his dream of being President without distinction of 
party. Jefferson, naturally enough, became spokes- 
man for the faction whose mission was to point out the 
difference between acts of the Federalists and theories 
of the Declaration of Independence. 

Jefferson, indeed, was the strong opposing personal- 
ity of the administration. He had little patience with 
General Knox, whom he called " a man of parade," and 
he and Hamilton quarreled almost daily upon every 
conceivable topic ; for Hamilton, Federalist to the core 
by instinct and conviction, became as inevitably spokes- 
man for the party in power. Even Washington could 
not preserve harmony in such a cabinet, and before the 
end of his first term both Hamilton and Jefferson re- 
signed. Afterward the President had still greater 
difficulty with his council. His critics taunted him 
with being able to get only second-rate men to fill their 
places ; and Vice-President Adams asserted that it was 



12 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

this, not high devotion to principle, that caused him to 
refuse a third term. But Adams was neither generous 
nor always just in his estimate of others. 

Party differences grew until the bitterness of politics 
invaded social life, and men who had been friends for 
years crossed the street to avoid meeting, looking in 
any direction except into each other's eyes. Wash- 
ington was accused of loving arbitrary power, of long- 
ing for the substance as well as the forms of monarchy, 
of lining his nest at public expense, to choose only 
three from a long list of political and moral crimes it 
is thankless to repeat. As one of his supporters justly 
said, constant reiteration of such charges " would tend 
to debase an angel." Yet when it was definitely 
learned that he would not again be a candidate, his 
critics awoke to the fact that they had trusted even 
while they vilified him. 

They were suddenly aware that the country was to 
be put to a new test. " His secession from the admin- 
istration will probably, within no distant period, ascer- 
tain whether our present system and Union can be 
preserved/' was a clumsy and wondering admission 
that the American experiment could never be thor- 
oughly tried so long as Washington remained Presi- 
dent. Because, despite all machinery of ballots and 
election, the relation between him and the voters was 
more that of loyal subjects and a beloved monarch 
than the colder one of constituents choosing a public 
servant to do their bidding. Washington's Farewell 
Address, with its wealth of warning and suggestion, 
showed that he, too, felt this personal relation. 

He retired gladly to the country life at Mount Ver- 
non, busied himself in its affairs, riding over his 
fields daily, and dismounting, perhaps, at the bars to 
receive a former aide with courteous civility; while 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 13 

happy in renewed ties, his wife looked well to her 
household, and chatted with neighbors about the public 
life of her husband and herself, which she called her 
" lost days." 

But this was not to last. Within two years menace 
of foreign war caused the new President to call the old 
President from retirement. And what Washington 
considered the new President's injustice in appointing 
officers to the new army caused him to dictate redress 
as the price of his services. War did not come; but 
the people knew from this that as long as Washington 
lived he was at his country's call, as ready to respond 
as ever. 

So the months went by until in the dark closing 
days of December, 1799, news came that his life was 
at an end. Europe bowed in acknowledgment of the 
passing of a great soul. England's channel fleet 
lowered its flags to half-mast; France draped her 
standards in black, and Napoleon, soldier of the cen- 
turies, who craved power as ardently as Washington 
had desired peace, paid his tribute to " the warrior, the 
legislator, the citizen without reproach." 

In the dead man's own country personal grief was 
overshadowed by deep national apprehension. The 
guiding, steadying influence of more than twenty years 
had been removed. Friends and critics alike expressed 
one thought. " America has lost her savior," Hamil- 
ton exclaimed. It was only afterward, as memories of 
intimate personal years pressed hard upon him, that 
he added brokenly, " And I, a father ! " 

In the towns bells tolled and grief-laden prayers 
ascended from church and hearthstone. In remote 
and lonely clearings, beyond the sound of bells, grief 
found its own expression. At night, after the few 
animals had been folded close to the cabin to protect 



14 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

them from wolves and prowling savages, little children 
lay wakeful, looking through chinks in the log walls 
at some star twinkling in the sky, and, oppressed with 
a strange sadness, fell asleep at last to the sound of 
their elders singing the lament for Washington : 

Where shall our country turn its eye? 
What help remains beneath the sky? 
Our friend, protector, strength, and trust 
Lies low moldering in the dust. 

Thus the new century found the Government enter- 
ing upon a new phase of its career. The choleric John 
Adams had been President for more than two years ; 
but so long as Washington lived the country refused 
to look upon any one else as its real head. 

The way of the transgressor may be hard indeed, 
but it is a path of roses compared with the thorny road 
the successor to a popular idol must tread; and when 
one reads the frankly expressed opinions of Adams's 
party friends and party enemies, one's sympathies go 
out to the man upon whom Washington's Presidential 
mantle fell. " His Superfluous Highness " was the title 
the opposition had suggested for him in the days when 
discussion raged as to what the high officials of the 
Government were to be called. He had great learn- 
ing, great patriotism, and an unquenchable spirit; but 
overlaying and enveloping them all was a positive 
genius for doing and saying untactful things; for ap- 
pearing at the worst possible advantage. 

A member of his cabinet once said of him that 
whether he was " sportful, playful, witty, kind, cold, 
drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, careless, cau- 
tious, confident, close, or open," he was " almost al- 
ways so in the wrong place and with the wrong per- 
son." The kindly Franklin characterized him as " al- 
ways honest, sometimes great, but often mad." One 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 15 

less genial remarked that even in his soberest moments 
Adams was " the greatest marplot in nature." And 
John Randolph of Roanoke, whose tongue added the 
poison of ridicule to the bitterness of gall, called him 
" that political Malvolio." 

The Vice-Presidency, which he had occupied during 
the eight years of Washington's term, was not an 
office fitted to soften the asperities of his nature, or 
to hide them. The chief duty of a Vice-President, — 
waiting to step into a dead man's shoes, — is thankless 
at best, carrying with it unjustly enough a little of the 
opprobrium that clings to the executioner and the 
scavenger, necessary, but not honored, servants of 
civilization. But a President can die only once, and 
is likely not to die at all. The thrifty makers of the 
Constitution, therefore, bent on having the Vice-Presi- 
dent earn his salary, added another duty, fortunately 
for the incumbent one of great dignity and occasionally 
of great importance, — that of presiding over the Sen- 
ate, and casting the deciding vote in case of a tie. This 
links the Vice-President in a manner with the adminis- 
tration of which he is nominally a part, but still leaves 
plenty of time for criticism, if he is so inclined. 

Adams sympathized with Washington's general 
policy, and respected him as a man. He had, indeed, 
been the one to propose him for commander-in-chief. 
During the eight years he was Vice-President he loyally 
cast his vote with the administration when occasion 
demanded; but he thought Washington's talents over- 
rated, and on becoming President in his turn was am- 
bitious to make a record brilliant enough to over- 
shadow him. Certainly no easy task, even without 
the handicap of Adams's obstinate personality. 

The twin curses of sensitiveness and unpopularity 
darkened even the ceremonies of inausfuration for this 



i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

unfortunate man. Writing to his wife about that im- 
pressive moment in the Hall of Representatives when 
every eye was moist, and even Washington's great 
self-command was sorely tried, he told her that there 
had been more weeping at the inauguration than at a 
tragedy, "but whether it was from grief or joy; 
whether from the loss of their beloved President or 
from the substitution of an unbeloved one ; or from 
the novelty of the thing, or from the sublimity of 
it ... I know not." 

He knew that he was vain. " Thank God I am 
so ! " he exclaimed. " Vanity is the cordial drop 
which makes the bitter cup of life go down." But it 
had its lingering after-taste, and justly proud of his 
record, — having, as one of his biographers puts it, 
" stepped from his little country law-office and proved 
himself a match for the diplomatists of Europe," — 
Adams resented the narrow margin by which he 
had been elected, calling himself with some bitterness 
" the President of three votes only." It has been said 
that he achieved the honor only because a political trick 
missed fire, — that the Federalists, like their opponents, 
considered him a " Superfluous Excellency," and placed 
him and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in nomination, 
intending so to juggle with the election that Pinckney 
the less known and more pliable of the two, should re- 
ceive the larger vote, apparently by accident. Instead, 
they found themselves saddled with Adams for Presi- 
dent, stubborn and unmanageable, while Jefferson, 
leader of a growing opposition, having reached to 
within those three votes of the higher office, became, 
by virtue of the law at that time in force, Vice-Presi- 
dent, with a Vice-President's unlimited opportunity 
for observation and criticism. 

It was not then the custom for the cabinet to go 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 17 

out of office with the President. Adams began his 
term with a group of men that he described as a legacy 
from General Washington. They smoldered along to- 
gether in uncongenial accord until about the time of 
Washington's death, when the inevitable explosion and 
reorganization took place. But a Vice-President can 
be removed by nothing short of crime or physical in- 
capacity, and Jefferson remained, an ever-present and 
irritating thorn in Adams's side. Adams had found 
it hard to learn and accept the passive role de- 
manded by the office, and he evidently took some 
satisfaction in impressing the same uncongenial lessons 
upon his successor, Jefferson asserted that he was 
never consulted upon any question of government after 
Adams had been two days in power. And he did not 
make the charge in the humorous mood of a later in- 
cumbent, who used to declare that his chief had asked 
his advice only once, and that was about the wording 
of a Thanksgiving proclamation. 

Jefferson's party was growing, and he was its un- 
doubted leader. It appeared almost certain that he 
would be Adams's successor. They had long been per- 
sonal friends and were to become good friends again, 
after lengthening years sent both to the retirement of 
private life. But as heir-apparent Jefferson was ob- 
noxious, and the breach between them soon became 
complete. " I believe he always liked me," Adams ad- 
mitted in a retrospect of his long career, " but he de- 
tested Hamilton and my whole administration. Then, 
he wished to be President of the United States, and 
I stood in his way. So he did everything that he 
could to pull me down. But if I should quarrel with 
him for that, I might quarrel with every man I have 
had anything to do with in life. . . . Did you never 
hear the lines : 



i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

I love my friend as well as you, 

But why should he obstruct my view? 

I forgive my enemies, and hope that they may find 
mercy in Heaven." 

Adams, however, had no idea of making Hfe easy 
for his enemies on earth, and no illusions whatever 
about being President of the whole people. He was of 
the opinion that party divisions " begin with human 
nature," and was prepared to fight every inch of his 
way to a success rivaling Washington's. That he even 
found zest in the fighting may be gathered from a re- 
mark he once made that he was glad he did not live in 
the millennium, for that would be " the most sickish 
life imaginable." 

His Presidency in no way resembled the millennium. 
Before he had been in ofiice a twelvemonth a day came 
when the street outside the door seethed with excited 
citizens. The governor ordered out horse and foot to 
keep the peace. Members of Adams's household in- 
dulged heroic, unnecessary dreams of a sortie into the 
mob, and the President himself, having caused chests 
of arms to be brought from the war office by back 
ways, stood ready to defend his home at the cost of his 
life, if need be. 

And this was only one outward and visible sign of 
his inward state, for politics, domestic and foreign, 
kept him in constant and truculent irritation. Eng- 
land and France each seemed bent on provoking the 
United States to war, and partizans of the English and 
French waxed contentious at home. The surging tide 
of the French Revolution, sending its wash of ship- 
wrecked and distressed across the Atlantic, had made 
of that great struggle a vital local issue. The country 
had been predisposed to French sympathy, but the ex- 
cesses of the Terror had naturally enough caused a 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 19 

reaction. Now Adams and his followers pointed to 
the carnival of butchery and atheism as the logical out- 
come of those doctrines of equality that Jefferson and 
his party upheld. It was primarily a question of tem- 
perament. Largely, also, it was a question of locality, 
and in some localities it became a matter of religious 
prejudice. In New England, for example, Federalism 
and Christianity were supposed to be on intimate terms, 
while Democracy was looked upon as " a wicked thing, 
born of Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson, and the Father of 
Lies." 

Bent on combating this formidable trio, Adams 
labored on in his unpopular way, striving to harden 
into custom and precedent the policies that Washington 
had adopted of necessity. And the faction that had 
objected to Washington's acts was not slow in con- 
demning his. He was criticized for many things, but 
chiefly for being himself. Personal likes and dislikes 
played a greater part in national affairs then than 
now, for the natural reason that the country, though 
wide in extent, was still very small in population, and 
only a fraction of that population as yet belonged to 
the governing class. A property qualification re- 
mained a barrier between the poor man and his vote 
in every one of the States, while the difference between 
yeomanry and gentry was still recognized, though, 
thanks to the new teachings, poor folk plodding along 
in the dust left behind by great folk as they passed in 
their coaches were beginning to see that all moved 
toward a common goal. 

The fundamental difference between the two parties 
lay in this : the theory of the Democratic Republicans 
was based on the belief that " the people " were reason- 
able and teachable, and therefore quite capable of tak- 
ing part in government. The Federals, on the other 



20 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

hand, maintained the superior fitness of the educated 
and well-to-do for tasks of this kind, and their conse- 
quent obligation to attend to such matters not only for 
themselves, but for their less fortunate neighbors. 
Their position, apparently borne out only too well by 
tragic events in France, was summed up with pic- 
turesque brutality by Hamilton one night in the heat 
of after-dinner debate, as he flung back the answer: 

" Your People, sir, — your People, — is a great 
beast!" 

Cordially as Adams disliked Hamilton, and shock- 
ing as he would have found such words uttered by any 
one except himself, he agreed with this in principle, 
grumbling that all projects of government based on 
the wisdom of the people were " cheats and delusions." 
Letting his peppery tongue run away with him, he did 
not scruple to state, — to the wrong man, — his doubt 
that the nation could endure unless the executive office 
was made hereditary. " What necessity of saying 
these things, even if he thought so? " his hearer asked 
in disgust. 

Once indeed during Adams's term of office popular 
sympathy was with the administration. This was 
when the country learned about Talleyrand's action 
in what is known as the X. Y. Z. affair. Little as 
Adams approved French ideals, he had no wish to go 
to war with France; and even after differences had 
reached a pass where our American minister was asked 
to leave Paris, the testy President controlled his re- 
sentment, and sent a commission of three distinguished 
men to see if the trouble could be adjusted. They 
were kept waiting in anterooms and corridors, put off 
with transparent excuses and one flimsy pretext after 
another, until even a babe in diplomacy, innocent of the 
French premier's tortuous methods, could not fail to 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 21 

see that bribery was hinted at. Pinckney's spirited 
" Milhons for defense, but not one cent for tribute " 
voiced the popular indignation, and turned election 
majorities into Federal success. 

But larger majorities in Congress did Adams little 
good. With war imminent, it was necessary to raise 
a new army, and this brought so much added work upon 
the Government that the President felt obliged to 
recommend increased salaries for some officials, and 
even to ask for a new cabinet officer, a secretary of the 
navy, the work of whose department had heretofore 
been divided between the war department and the 
treasury. The opposition was not slow to raise the cry 
of extravagance, ever potent in republics, and jealous- 
ies incurred in assigning commands in the new army 
proved an added pitfall. By common consent Wash- 
ington was the one man talked about for commander- 
in-chief. Many thought Hamilton equally entitled to 
second place, but distrust of Hamilton blinded Adams 
alike to justice and policy. He named another. This 
raised a storm of protest, and Washington, taking sides 
with the friends of Hamilton, flatly refused to leave 
his retirement at Mount Vernon until what he deemed 
a wrong was righted. In the correspondence between 
them Adams lost not only his point, but another frac- 
tion of popular good-will that he could ill afford to 
spare. 

The Alien and Sedition laws, too, passed by Congress 
at the instigation of the administration, overshot the 
mark. These made it difficult to obtain citizenship, 
and gave the President authority to order out of the 
country any foreigner he might deem dangerous with- 
out giving his reasons or affording the man under sus- 
picion a trial ; and there were other provisions impos- 
ing fines for " illegal " combinations and conspiracy, 



22 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and for " scandalous and malicious " publications 
against the Government, that proved fine ammunition 
to Adams's enemies when the next Presidential election 
drew near. 

The Democratic Republicans, using all their political 
skill, managed, moreover, to take the wind out of the 
sails of certain administration measures that should 
have been popular by making them seem like truckling 
on the part of Adams to the growing anti-Federal senti- 
ment. Altogether the task he had set himself of con- 
ducting an administration more brilliant and successful 
than that of Washington was ending in sad disappoint- 
ment. This did not increase his serenity and peace of 
mind. Nothing worked to that end. Even the re- 
moval of the seat of government from orderly and con- 
ventional Philadelphia to the quagmires of the new 
capital on the banks of the Potomac was one more trial 
in his last year of office. 

The opposition of Hamilton to Adams's reelection 
proved the last straw. How far this was due to 
Adams's treatment of Hamilton in the military appoint- 
ments was a question eagerly discussed and gossiped 
about by their contemporaries. They were all very 
human men, and the passions of the day were much in- 
flamed. Hamilton lost his usually clear head and 
wrote a pamphlet attacking Adams that the other Fed- 
eralist leaders tried vainly to suppress, and which a 
certain Aaron Burr of New York, whose dislike of 
Hamilton was notorious, read with malicious glee, and 
used for his own ends. 

Political dread of Hamilton was at this time almost 
the only sentiment held in common by Jefferson and 
Adams. Jefferson saw in Hamilton the brains of the 
Federal party. With Adams it seems to have been 
largely a matter of thwarted ambition. As strong a 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 23 

Federalist as himself, Hamilton was more brilliant, if 
not so learned, and he had the gift of popularity, which 
Adams woefully lacked. Even in the face of a mob 
Hamilton could win personal support and applause. 
One might love him, though disapproving everything 
he did. Had it been possible to approve of all Adams 
did, he could not have won love or spontaneous ap- 
plause. 

The Presidential election of 1800 brought Adams 
defeat, this time by more than three electoral votes. 
Jefferson received eight more than he; but even so 
Jefferson was not elected, because that same Aaron 
Burr, whom the Democratic Republicans had been sup- 
porting with an idea of making him Vice-President, 
received exactly the same number. This, according 
to the Constitution, threw the election into the House 
of Representatives. Three months must elapse before 
the House chose between them, for it could not proceed 
to an election until after the date for officially count- 
ing the electoral votes. Therefore there was plenty 
of time for sobering thought, and Burr was not a man 
to inspire confidence. He was talented, but unscrupu- 
lous, — " Hamilton, with Hamilton's nobility left out." 
It was known that the vote in the House of Repre- 
sentatives would be exceedingly close. Jefferson's own 
account asserts that influential Federalists, among them 
that rock-ribbed. God-fearing man President Adams 
himself, caused it to be made plain to him that Federal 
opposition to his election would cease if he would only 
assure the country he meant to do none of those radical 
things threatened by his party, such as dismissing all 
Federalist office-holders, abolishing the navy, or wip- 
ing out the public debt. 

Jefferson refused to make any promises or to dis- 
close his plans. Anxiety increased; and as had been 



24 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

apprehended, the contest that followed the official 
counting of the electoral votes was long and close. 
The first votes by the House resulted in a deadlock 
that lasted almost a week, and the final struggle to 
break this deadlock occupied more than thirty hours. 
Those near enough to follow the proceedings watched 
breathlessly. The more distant parts of the country 
waited impatient for news. In Washington all 
thoughts centered on the unfinished Capitol crowning 
its hill ; few had eyes for the President's house, equally 
unfinished, among the trees a mile away. The town 
was as yet scarcely begun. Scattered groups of houses 
were to be seen here and there, few in any one place, 
and most of those small and unimposing. A mile be- 
yond the President's house lay the little village of 
Georgetown. Among them all the members of Con- 
gress and officers of the Government had managed to 
find more or less uncomfortable lodging. On this oc- 
casion every representative had been summoned, even 
those who were ill. Then the doors were closed. 

" Not an individual left that solemn assembly," a 
diary of the time tells us. " The necessary refresh- 
ment . . . was taken in rooms adjoining the Hall. 
. . . Beds as well as food were sent for the accommo- 
dation of those whom age or debility disabled from 
enduring such a long-protracted sitting. The ballot- 
ing took place every hour. In the interval men ate, 
drank, slept, or pondered over the result of the last 
ballot; compared ideas and persuasions to change 
votes." 

One woman was present. She had accompanied her 
" almost dying husband " through the raw February 
chill from his lodgings two miles away, and watched 
beside his bed in an anteroom, ready to rouse him and 
guide his weak fingers as he wrote his ballot. Hour 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 

From the painting by Gilbert Stuart 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 25 

after hour the vote was taken, counted, and the same 
announcement made. Daylight settled into dark; 
darkness dragged wearily again into light. The in- 
valid slept and stirred. The wife sitting beside him 
grew perceptibly haggard. On the faces of the mem- 
bers determination gave place to anger and sullen, ut- 
ter weariness. 

It became evident that Jefferson's supporters would 
not yield; but which of the opposition could bear the 
reproach of making the first move? It was managed 
by a flutter of blank ballots and skilful beating of the 
devil around the stump. One member from South 
Carolina withdrew his vote by prearrangement. The 
sole member from Delaware, voting blank, " gave up 
his party for his country," as the diary picturesquely 
says; and so, to quote Jefferson, the election occurred 
" without a single vote coming over." News was 
quickly given to those waiting outside, who cheered 
dutifully, if not enthusiastically, and the wearied legis- 
lators hurried off to their lodgings, " the conspirators," 
as they were darkly called, pursued by fears of bodily 
vengeance. 

It was in this unflattering manner that Jefferson's 
" lurching for the Presidency," of which he had long 
been accused, was satisfied. But the choice undoubt- 
edly reflected the popular will. Confronted with the 
alternative of Jefferson or Burr, a large majority of 
Americans preferred Jefferson's frank theorizing to 
Burr's shifty politics. But to Adams's mind even the 
lesser of the two evils was a national calamity. 

Angry and disappointed, he set about doing all that 
he could during the short remainder of his term to 
thwart the incoming President's plans. Two weeks 
before Jefferson's inauguration. Congress voted cer- 
tain changes in the judiciary system which involved the 



26 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

appointment of new judges. As a matter of precedent 
and courtesy, these should have been left to the new 
executive. But Adams conceived it his duty to set 
patriotism above politeness, and signed appointments 
up to nine o'clock on the third of March ; then early 
next morning he drove away from the city, too bitter 
to remain and take part in the ceremonies and amenities 
of the inauguration. 

From his retirement in Massachusetts he exercised 
his privilege of free speech to lavish upon the new 
President the vigorous disapproval that his failure 
to realize cherished ambitions and a sincere appre- 
hension for the country's future caused to well up in 
his nature. 

Time and the logic of events softened his resent- 
ment. Ten years after leaving the White House in 
such unseemly haste he had come to see that the differ- 
ence between himself and his successor was one of 
method only. In 1811 he wrote to Dr. Rush: 

In point of Republicanism, all the difference I ever knew or 
could discover between you and me, or Jefferson and me, con- 
sisted : 

1. In the difference between speeches and messages. I was 
a monarchist because I thought a speech more manly, more re- 
spectful to Congress and the nation. Jefferson and Rush pre- 
ferred messages. 

2. I held levees once a week that all my time might not be 
wasted by the visits. Jefferson's whole eight years was a 
levee. 

3. I dined a large company once or twice a week. Jeffer- 
son dined a dozen every day. 

4. Jefferson and Rush were for liberty and straight hair. I 
thought curled hair was as republican as straight. 

Further lapse of time completely healed the breach 
between them. It is agreeable to remember that the 
tact of Mrs. Adams revived their old friendship, that 



AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR 27 

they exchanged long and cordial letters during the 
latter years of their lives ; and on the memorable fiftieth 
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when 
the spirits of both these brave men passed on, each died 
thinking of the other, comforted in the belief that the 
other still lived. 



CHAPTER II 

DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 

THE country waited in anxiety to see what the 
poHtical reformer would do. He had re- 
fused to bind himself by promises, and had 
remained withdrawn upon his estate during the entire 
campaign summer, following the precedent set by 
Washington and Adams, who held that the choice of 
a President was no matter for a candidate's meddling, 
but one exclusively between the voters and their own 
consciences. 

While the country did not know what Jefferson 
meant to do, it did know that Jefferson's election was 
in effect a minor revolution, giving sanction to the 
trial of a whole brood of new theories. It was re- 
served for an American of a later day to call the 
Declaration of Independence a self-evident lie, but 
many looked upon its broad assertions as dangerous 
and its author as a dangerous man. Politics was a 
vital matter, so vital that statesmen whose interest wan- 
dered were regarded with suspicion, and Jefferson was 
known to have explored in many fields of thought. He 
was suspected of holding lamentably lax views upon 
religion. He enjoyed converse with men of lawless 
minds under the guise of research in philosophy and 
science. He had even entertained such men as Priest- 
ley and Tom Paine in his own home. 

His service as minister to France had given him a 
large acquaintance and experience. Less erudite than 
Adams, his knowledge was wide rather than deep, but 

28 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 29 

it was ample to afford him a grasp of many practical 
things, and ready sympathy in realms of thought to 
which his countrymen gave little heed. The sum of 
this knowledge was to make him an all-around, wide- 
awake man, given to theorizing, but with enough com- 
mon sense in the long run to ballast his theories, a 
mental equipment providential in a President at that 
moment, but one to fill conservatives with deep forebod- 
ing. 

The campaign had reeked with personalities. Social 
and political sins had been piled before Jefferson's door 
in unreasoning profusion, and the aims of his party 
had been denounced in no measured terms. " In plain 
language," one good and earnest Federalist mourned, 
" the greatest villain in the community is the fittest 
person to make and execute the laws. . . . Can imag- 
ination paint anything more dreadful this side Hell? " 

While all this was unpleasant, it was far less irri- 
tating to Jefferson than it would have been to one of 
Adams's intensely morbid egotism. " Whig and Tory 
belong to natural history," was his more genial way of 
echoing Adams's crabbed " parties begin in human na- 
ture." He serenely refused to recognize the Jefferson 
they abused as anything more than a man of straw, 
made up of all his supposed vices. 

There were of course some politically opposed to 
him who saw no reason to believe the country in ex- 
treme peril. " So, the anti-Federals are now to sup- 
port their own administration and take a turn at rolling 
stones uphill," Chief-Justice Ellsworth wrote to Rufus 
King. " Good men will get a breathing-spell, and the 
credulous will learn to understand the game of out and 
in." 

This was the first exchange of places in the political 
game of out and in, and both sides had yet to learn 



30 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

how astonishingly pliable new theories become in bend- 
ing to hard conditions of fact. The optimists were 
justified. Responsibility had its usual sobering effect, 
the liberals becoming more conservative, just as con- 
servatives had already been more liberal than their 
creed. It is always so ; hence the paradox that human 
fallibility (another name for abstract sin) eventually 
brings about an approach toward perfection. 

Of the fourteen points emphasized in Jefferson's 
inaugural address there was scarcely one over which 
honest Federals and honest Republicans could not in- 
dulge an honest handshake, and it is hard to see wherein 
his treatment of large questions differed greatly from 
that which the Federalists might have given them under 
like conditions. Indeed, in the crowning act of his 
administration, the purchase of Louisiana, he was more 
imperialistic than Adams could have been, for Adams's 
near-sighted New England vision was incapable of 
reaching beyond the Alleghanies. 

The two great achievements of Jefferson's life, for 
which all his mistakes must be forgiven and his whim- 
sicalities condoned, stand at the two extremes of his 
wide political range. The writing of the Declaration 
of Independence was an exercise of his intellect, a state- 
ment of what he believed ought to be, which caught 
popular sentiment and focused it to power, as rays of 
light are focused in a burning-glass. The purchase of 
Louisiana was quite beyond reason or even theory. 
He knew it by inspiration to be the will of destiny in 
regard to his country. His democracy was always a 
matter of the head rather than of the heart ; and to his 
honor be it said that whenever his carefully cultivated 
principles bumped in painful collision against his sense 
of what was fitting for a great nation, he threw theory 
to the winds and followed instinct rather than be ham- 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 31 

pered by the kind of consistency that Emerson called 
the hobgoblin of little minds. 

Jefferson's first acts as President were not at all 
alarming. Far from turning out all Federal office- 
holders, he " proceeded with moderation," appointing 
party friends only as the terms of Federals expired; 
and he returned to the rule observed by Washington, 
which Adams was inclined to violate, of refusing to ap- 
point his own relatives, no matter what their politics. 
Justly enough, he resented Adams's " midnight " ap- 
pointment of new judges. " So far as they are during 
pleasure," Jefferson wrote, " I shall not consider the 
persons named as candidates," " nor pay the respect of 
notifying them that I consider what is done a nullity." 

Adams had tried by these appointments to safeguard 
the reorganized judiciary. It was an act justifiable 
only on the plea of extreme necessity, as was the be- 
guiling offer made to Jefferson when his election hung 
in doubt in the House of Representatives. But, after 
all, morality is not a fixed quantity : had Jefferson been 
the unsafe man Adams feared, the country would have 
been in danger, and Adams justified in any measure he 
could take to lessen it. Actuated by the highest mo- 
tives, but without the excuse of necessity, these acts 
degenerate into stupid political blunders that the white 
intensity of Adams's patriotism is enough to burn from 
the record. 

Adams's hasty departure had already shorn inaugura- 
tion day of half its ceremonial importance. The 
Democratic President further curtailed its splendors, 
and for some time kept official society in a flutter over 
details of his Republican reforms. From the distance 
of a century we are forced to admire the wit and skill 
with which Jefferson thus managed to divert attention 
from more serious issues until he could get his bearings 



32 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and measure the forces for and against him. Some of 
his minor reforms, hke his " Canons of Etiquette to be 
Observed by the Executive," ^ which promulgated the 
rules of " pile mele " and wiped the social slate free 
from title and precedence with one mighty Republican 
sweep, roused a buzzing like angry bees among diplo- 
mats, and even threatened international trouble. But, 
yielded at the opportune moment, they could be bartered 
for more important concessions. 

In the early days of Washington's Presidency ques- 
tions of social usage had required speedy settlement. 
Washington had appealed to a number of leaders, 
among them Adams and Hamilton, Jay and Madison, 
for help in making rules of official conduct, begging 
rather wistfully to be told whether one day in seven 
was not enough to set apart for visits of mere cere- 
mony, and one hour of each day, — eight o'clock a. m., 
which was a favorite time, apparently, with the Father 
of his Country, — to receive visitors who came on busi- 
ness. Might he himself make visits not as President, 
but as a private citizen ? What must he do about din- 
ner-parties, etc. ? 

1 Extract from " Canons of Etiquette to be Observed by the 
Executive " : 

4th. Among the members of the Diplomatic Corps, the Ex- 
ecutive Government, in its own principles of personal and national 
equality, considers every Minister as the representative of his 
Nation, and equal to every other without distinction of grade. 

Sth. At dinners, in public or private, and on all other occasions 
of social intercourse, a perfect equality exists between the persons 
composing the company, whether foreign or domestic, titled or un- 
titled, in or out of office. 

pf/i. To give force to the principles of equality or pele mele, 
and prevent the growth of precedence out of courtesy, the mem- 
bers of the Executive, at their own houses, will adhere to the an- 
cient usage of their ancestors, — gentlemen en masse giving place 
to ladies en masse. 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 33 

Little by little the code of manners had defined it- 
self. Mrs. Washington held her Friday evening 
levees; and at stated intervals the President gathered 
companies about his table for those oppressively silent 
dinners — " the most solemn I ever sat at," a participant 
feelingly confided to his diary. 

Adams's reply to the President's inquiries had 
bristled M^ith chamberlains and aides-de-camp. He had 
reminded his chief that the royal office in Poland was 
a " mere shadow " compared with the dignity of the 
American President; had mentioned the dogeship of 
Venice and the stadtholder of Holland slightingly in 
the same connection, and had warned Washington that 
" if the state and pomp essential to this great depart- 
ment are not in good degree preserved, it will be in 
vain for America to hope for consideration with 
foreign powers." 

So when he came into the Presidency, the stately ob- 
servances of Washington's day were not allowed to 
lapse. Even transplanting the seat of government 
from Philadelphia to the unfinished town on the Po- 
tomac had served only to jolt and rather humorously 
distort them. With the chill of new plaster pervading 
the executive residence, Mrs. Adams despaired of get- 
ting sufficient wood cut either for love or money from 
the growing trees surrounding it to fill its yawning 
fireplaces and dispel the dampness. She put the great 
audience-room to the only use its unfinished condition 
permitted, — drying the Presidential linen. Looking 
from its unglazed windows over the small and scat- 
tered groups of houses, all that had yet materialized of 
L'Enfant's imposing plan, she reflected that their in- 
habitants must subsist " like fishes, by eating each 
other." But she played her role of President's lady 
with spirit, maintained her hours for levees, and 



34 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

answered the " fishes," when they came to call, that 
she thought the new capital had " a beautiful situation." 

It had indeed. Half-way between Maine and 
Georgia, at that time our northern and southern bound- 
aries; inland, but at the head of tide-water on a noble 
stream; planned along generous lines to cover a suc- 
cession of hills upon which a city once built could not 
be hid, it was, and seemed likely to remain, fairly cen- 
tral. Even the most optimistic patriot could not fore- 
see how far that mythical reality, the center of popula- 
tion, was to travel westward decade by decade during 
the next century, unimpeded by war or misfortune, 
until the city on the Potomac was left upon the edge 
of our great country. 

Jefferson's imagination was vivid enough to see the 
city of the future, with its avenues and stately build- 
ings, in Major L'Enfant's plan ; but it is also quite 
possible that he saw the absurdity of trying to keep up 
the fiction of present ceremony in a capital whose 
houses were non-existent and whose thoroughfares 
were marvels of ruts and bad drainage. Personally 
of very simple habits, both inclination and conviction 
urged him to dispense as much as possible with the 
mummery of his office. The story that he rode to his 
inauguration, tied his horse to the picket-fence at the 
foot of the Capitol, and mounted the steps to take his 
oath of office has been relegated time and again to the 
limbo of lost, but cherished, fable. Even the knock- 
down objection that there was no fence fails to keep 
it there. The bit of truth at the bottom lies in the 
curtailed ceremonies of the day, and in the fact that 
soon after he became President he changed the custom 
of making a speech on the opening of Congress, pref- 
aced by " a stately cavalcade attending the President 
to the Capitol," and followed by an equally stately 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 35 

procession of Congressmen and Senators in coaches 
back again to the President's house with answering 
addresses. Jefferson instituted the simpler method of 
sending Congress a written message, a custom that 
endured for over a century, until another Democrat 
chose to return to the more ancient usage of direct 
speech. The change, however, had neither political 
nor spiritual significance. It w^as purely physical. 
The taunt of Jefferson's critics that he never made a 
speech is almost literally true. An infirmity that 
caused his voice " to sink in his throat " when he 
attempted a public address at once explains it and 
absolves him from criticism. 

In ordinary conversation he was ready enough. 
Winfield Scott, who observed him with the critical 
attention of ambitious youth toward famous maturity, 
thought him " an incessant talker." From others we 
learn that his conversation, while not brilliant, flowed 
on, thoughtful and agreeable, seasoned with old-fash- 
ioned compliment in the style of Virginia gentlemen 
of pre-Revolutionary days. He was not handsome, if 
we may trust Tucker's description of him as " tall, 
thin, and raw-boned," with " red hair, a freckled face, 
and pointed features," but his height, — more than six 
feet two, — and his rather loose-jointed carriage made 
him a marked man in any assembly. In dress he was 
governed by comfort rather than by elegance. " Pride 
costs more than hunger, thirst, and cold," he used to 
say; and as he lived in an epoch that witnessed a 
mighty revolution in men's clothing as well as in men's 
government, monarchy's queues and velvets giving 
way to short hair and the useful, ungainly pantaloon, 
only the watchfulness of his body-servant saved him 
from unbelievable anachronisms of costume. Indeed, 
in later life, at Monticello, where this Democrat ruled 



36 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

absolute king, he often wore the garments of several 
different periods together, like superimposed geologic 
strata, or the historic remains in the Roman Forum, 

Left a widower many years before he became Presi- 
dent, he maintained at the White House only a simple 
establishment, though visited occasionally by his mar- 
ried daughters. His family affections were very 
strong, and frequent letters to them bore a recurring 
burden of questions about all things alive at Monticello, 
from his grandchildren to his cabbages, interspersed 
with good advice, reports on politics, or the wonders of 
science, and gallantly attempted descriptions of the 
fashions, which he hoped were detailed and accurate 
enough to serve as working models. When the White 
House was in need of a hostess, warm-hearted Mrs. 
Madison, wife of his secretary of state, discharged that 
duty for him. 

One of Jefferson's earliest reforms, in the interest 
of economy of time, was to do away with levees. He 
announced that he would receive publicly only twice 
a year, on January first and the Fourth of July. The 
ladies of Washington, loath to give up what little 
courtly elegance Mrs. Adams's weekly drawing-rooms 
had lent to the embryo capital, tried to coerce him by ap- 
pearing in force at the usual time. Told that he was 
not at home, they waited. He returned at last, and 
received them readily and courteously enough, but just 
as he was, dusty from his ride, without a word of 
apology for his appearance. His perfect unconcern 
gave them to understand unmistakably that he would 
not change his plan, no matter how often their petti- 
coat invasion might be repeated, and they retired 
beaten, but laughing at his tact and their own discom- 
fiture. 

He refused to make journeys of ceremony, although 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 37 

both Washington and Adams had done so, pointing 
out that Washington's action was no precedent, since 
his place in the affections of his countrymen set him 
apart from all others, and indulging in a covert fling 
at Adams : " I confess that I am not reconciled to the 
idea of a Chief Magistrate parading himself through 
the several States as an object of public gaze, and in 
quest of an applause which to be valuable should be 
purely voluntary." 

He strove to be a consistent Democrat; to keep the 
business approaches to the White House wide open, 
but to close those of merely social character, believing 
politics, not society, to be the duty for which he was 
elected. And politics was no child's play. Reversing 
positions in the game of out and in had not materially 
bettered affairs. Public irritation against England and 
France was still rife, though somewhat changed in 
character. Those two countries were now at war, and, 
in striking at each other's trade, were dealing stagger- 
ing blows upon our commerce. 

The United States had built up a successful trade 
with the West Indies. England now decreed that 
neutral ships must not carry goods from the West 
Indies to France or to any European country that 
sided with France in the quarrel. France, on her 
part, forbade neutral vessels to enter British harbors. 
Both combatants seized vessels they caught disobeying 
these orders, and American shipping suffered now from 
one and now from the other until the battle of Trafal- 
gar ended French activity at sea. Afterward England 
continued her seizures in a manner even more galling to 
America, stopping our vessels wherever she found 
them, and impressing our sailors into her navy on the 
charge that they were British subjects. In 1807 the 
British ship Leopard capped the affront by overhauling 



38 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the frigate Chesapeake at our very doors, just outside 
the port of Norfolk, Virginia. On the refusal of the 
American commander to give up the men demanded, 
the Leopard opened fire, killing three and wounding 
eighteen of her crew. 

The wrath of the United States knew no bounds, 
but it had to be satisfied with a half-hearted apology 
from England, for the American navy, intrepid in 
spirit, was lamentably weak in numbers. Driven to 
some kind of retaliation, the administration hit upon 
the policy of the Embargo, which resulted in greater 
injury to ourselves than to Great Britain. Theoreti- 
cally such a decree, forbidding vessels to sail from 
America to any foreign port, could not fail to cripple 
England's immense trade with this country. Con- 
gress and the administration merely overlooked the 
fact that while England's commerce might be crippled, 
ours would inevitably be killed, since we were much 
more dependent upon Great Britain in the matter of 
trade than Great Britain was upon us. 

New England, stronghold of Federalism and center 
of the American shipping industry, waxed derisive and 
voluble against what it called the " terrapin policy " 
of the Embargo, comparing it to the tactics of the 
lowly animal that pulls feet and head within its shell 
when struck, instead of showing fight. Jefferson was 
harshly criticized for all the policies and shortcomings 
of his administration. His popularity seemed for a 
time to wane ; but this was only temporary, and he was 
reelected at the end of his first term by what has since 
become known in political language as a landslide, the 
Federalist candidate receiving only fourteen electoral 
votes. 

He was delighted, and claimed that Federalism had 
come over in toto to the Republican party. The truth 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 39 

is that by a lucky combination of circumstances the 
people were able just then to eat their cake and have 
it, too. Professing the " political metaphysics " of 
democracy, as Chief-Justice Marshall styled it, they 
reaped the benefit of measures that would have done 
credit to the reign of an emperor. At the moment Jef- 
ferson was reelected the issues freshest in public mem- 
ory were those picturesque and undemocratic ones for 
which his administration was to live in history, — the 
war with Tripoli, the Oregon explorations, and the 
purchase of Louisiana. 

Fortunately for his country, his republicanism 
worked only intermittently, and served as a check, not 
a deterrent, to those empire-wide schemes toward 
which his mind gravitated by nature. His conception 
of the office of President left him powerless to protect 
a few shade-trees growing near the Executive Mansion. 
His party's conception of states' rights made it diffi- 
cult to keep a wagon-road in order if it crossed the 
border-line between two commonwealths. Yet he 
found no difficulty in reading his title clear to purchase 
the third of a continent, or to fit out at government ex- 
pense an expedition to cross the whole of North Amer- 
ica and clear up mysteries in uncharted regions not then 
owned by the United States. Nor did his distrust of 
a navy prevent his sending our very young one half 
around the world on police duty that the nations of 
Europe refuse to undertake. 

The navy was one of the bugbears of the Demo- 
cratic Republicans. They called it the Great Beast 
with the Great Belly, because of its cost ; and they had 
much to say about the arrogance navies breed in na- 
tions. Jefferson cherished a scheme, based on some- 
thing he once read about Venice, for keeping a nice 
little one exclusively for coast defense, safe and dry 



40 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

under cover in times of peace; yet his first act as Presi- 
dent, in gallant disregard of principle, was giving con- 
sent to the spectacular sea-fights known as the war with 
Tripoli. 

On the whole round globe there is no spot so adapted 
to the trade of piracy as that portion of the coast 
of Africa upon which Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and 
Morocco crouched for years to prey upon the rich 
prizes of the sea. Dominating the Strait of Gibraltar, 
that needle's eye through which three fourths of the 
commerce of the world must pass, with a desert behind 
them into which to retreat with their plunder, and 
with the waves of two seas constantly wafting ships 
toward their shores, they had only to gather in what 
fortune brought them. Everything it brought turned 
to profit, men as well as goods ; for sailors made sturdy 
slaves, or, if not fit for slaves, could be held for 
ransom. 

Through their bloody hands the Middle Ages reached 
out and took toll of the nineteenth century ; and noth- 
ing so links the new United States of America with 
a far-of¥ undesirable past as that for sixteen years 
our sailors were made slaves, our American officers 
languished in captivity, and our country, like the 
rest of the civilized world, paid tribute to " the pests 
of Christendom." It remained for our young coun- 
try to bring this state of things to an end, for the 
strong trading nations of Europe had one and all 
submitted, a fact which seems incredible unless there 
is truth in the dark hint that England, strongest of 
them all, was not ill pleased to have these cutthroats 
aid her by attacking her enemies. In other words, 
that " Barbary piracy was a protective tax in favor 
of British bottoms." 

The pirates plundered only where plundering was 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 41 

worth while; it may have been with a gleam of pride 
as well as of wrath, accepted as a sort of commercial 
and naval accolade, that this country learned in the 
autumn of 1785 that the Algerines had declared war 
upon the United States and captured two of our ships. 
Some of our statesmen were frankly not sorry. " The 
more we are ill treated abroad, the more we shall unite 
and consolidate at home," wrote John Jay, who was at 
the time secretary under Congress for foreign affairs. 
" Besides, as it may become a nursery for seamen, and 
lay the foundations for a respectable navy, it may 
eventually prove more beneficial than otherwise." Jay 
evidently did not view a navy with Jefferson's dis- 
trust. 

In the course of ten years over one hundred 
Americans had been made slaves or held for ransom, 
and over a dozen vessels had struck their colors to 
the pirates. While Washington was President a 
treaty was concluded with Algiers, agreeing to pay a 
large sum for the release of all Americans in captivity, 
and promising further tribute if our ships were left 
alone. " The terms," wrote Oliver Ellsworth, " though 
humiliating, are as moderate as there was reason to 
expect." 

Other negotiations were held with other members of 
the piratical band, and it was to one of these that John 
Adams referred when he said that the Sultan of 
Morocco had made an easy treaty with us " because 
we were Unitarians," meaning that as a nation we 
made no official statement of belief in the Trinity. 

But though they might regard us as coreligionists, 
the demands of our rapacious friends grew faster than 
our inclination to fulfil them. In 1800, Tripoli asked 
for a frigate or brig, and insisted that Captain Bain- 
bridge carry the Algerine ambassador to Constanti- 



42 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

nople with his goods and his presents, a bit of service 
that went sorely against the grain of the American 
commander. Next year the Bey of Tunis demanded 
forty cannon and ten thousand stand of arms. These 
not being forthcoming, Tripoli declared war, and be- 
fore Jefferson had been President two months he found 
himself despatching Admiral Dale to the other side of 
the world with two thirds of our available navy, — 
four of the six ships then in commission, — to admin- 
ister to the Barbary pirates a w^ell-deserved trouncing. 
It was done in a manner so thorough and salutary that 
the Pope of Rome, officially bound to consider Jeffer- 
son and his countrymen heretics, publicly declared that 
they had done more for Christendom against these 
plagues of the sea than the whole of Europe combined. 

The audacity of our infant navy in taking up a 
challenge refused by all Christendom is equaled only 
by the incredible picturesqueness of this war with 
Tripoli, which seems to have been invented by history 
expressly to lure boys in heart and boys in years on 
through less readable pages of its musty volumes. 

Admiral Dale held a commission to chase corsairs, — 
the obsolete name in itself gives a thrill, — but those 
were the leisurely days of sails. They w^ere also days 
of bitter opposition at home. He was despatched 
upon his errand in 1801 but with orders that greatly 
hampered him. It was 1803 before actual fighting 
took place, and it was not to Dale, but to Commodore 
Edward Pre6ble sent out in the latter year with a freer 
hand that Congress voted thanks and a gold medal 
and a sword. Meanwhile pirates had been sighted 
and chased, and had given chase, but escaped into 
the shelter of harbors where Americans could not 
follow them. The Americans always followed to the 
verge of safety. On November i, 1803, the narrow 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 43 

line of safety was crossed by that same Captain Wil- 
liam Bainbridge, who had so unwillingly carried the 
Algerine ambassador to Constantinople. In his frigate 
the Philadelphia he pursued a corsair into the very 
harbor of Tripoli, found himself suddenly upon a 
sunken rock, was surrounded by a cormorant throng 
of the enemy's smaller boats, and captured, his crew 
and officers being plundered even of their clothing be- 
fore they reached the land. All were dispersed into 
slavery; Bainbridge himself, kept a prisoner in Tripoli, 
had the torment of seeing his ship refitted under her 
new owners. Somehow he found means of writing 
letters. In one, sent out at random in the hope it 
might fall into helpful hands, he outlined the possi- 
bility of recapturing the Philadelphia before she could 
leave the harbor. 

His hope was justified. Chance, — or should it have 
another name? — carried the letter to the right man 
for the task, and Lieutenant Stephen Decatur, in com- 
mand of the little Intrepid, a captured prize of only 
forty or fifty tons, overloaded with men and under- 
supplied with food, sailed to the rescue. The insuffi- 
cient food they had was of poor quality, mainly hard- 
tack, water, and spoiled salt meat ; but high spirits and 
good weather went far to overcome these drawbacks. 

Nearing the harbor of Tripoli on a moonlight night, 
they sighted the Philadelphia lying a mile within the 
entrance. Her masts were not yet all in place, but her 
guns, as events proved, were loaded and shotted. 
Near her lay two corsaij-s, with a few gunboats and 
smaller craft. Decatur gave his commands. The 
Philadelphia was to be boarded, her spar-deck first 
taken, then her main-deck. After that she must be 
given to the flames, since she was in no condition to put 
to sea. 



44 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

True to her name, the little Intrepid steered directly 
for her mark, most of Decatur's men lying concealed, 
with orders not to show themselves until the signal for 
action was given. When hailed by those aboard the 
Philadelphia, she answered that she belonged to Malta, 
was engaged in trade, had lost her anchors in a 
recent storm, and wished to lie near the frigate until 
morning. Decatur stood beside the pilot and em- 
broidered upon this theme, prompting him with many 
and ingenious details about the cargo and the heavy 
weather experienced, as with each phrase the Intrepid 
edged nearer and nearer the exact spot where she 
would be most protected from the enemy's guns. But 
a puff of wind shifted their relative positions, and 
passed on, leaving her fully exposed to the frigate's 
broadside. 

Several Turks were looking over the rail, curious, 
but as yet unsuspicious. They even lowered a boat 
and sent a line to the visitor, with which Decatur's 
men, still concealed, brought the two yet closer to- 
gether. It was only when the Turks caught sight of 
the Intrepid's anchors that they learned they had been 
duped. A sharp order to keep off was followed by 
the panic-stricken cry " Amerikanos! " as a last strong 
pull brought her alongside, and men heretofore in hid- 
ing swarmed over the rail. The Turks gave way. 
Some rushed below, some jumped into the sea. In ten 
minutes Decatur was in possession, and soon the 
Philadelphia was in flames. 

She burned like tinder ; so rapidly, indeed, that the 
Americans had barely time to escape from the fire they 
had kindled. For a breathless moment the lines of 
the two ships were entangled, and the Intrepid, jammed 
against the burning frigate, seemed in danger of shar- 
ing the fate of her adversary. A sword-stroke cut 



DEMOCRAT OR IMPERIALIST 45 

her hawser, and a vigorous push sent her out of harm's 
way as the flames leaned hungrily toward her, then 
leaped hissing up the Philadelphia's rigging, 

A cheer burst from the Americans. Until then they 
had worked almost in silence, too absorbed to make 
unnecessary sounds. The Turks, on their part, had 
seemed as paralyzed in voice as in resistance. But the 
American shout woke noise everywhere. Turkish 
batteries, the corsairs, and a galley all sent a rain of 
shot after the Intrepid as she sped out of the harbor, 
her pathway lighted by the burning frigate. Even the 
Philadelphia's guns, heated by the fire, began to ex- 
plode, one broadside discharging itself toward the 
town, as if in revenge for Turkish indignities, the 
other toward a guarding fort. 

This exploit and others as dramatic brought the 
war in 1805 to an end satisfactory to European com- 
merce, and laid the foundation for that confidence in 
our navy, closely akin to vainglory, which a century of 
experience has only intensified in American breasts. 
■Its picturesque successes doubtless had much to do with 
the light-heartedness with which the country went to 
war with England in 18 12, During that struggle the 
Barbary pirates again began harassing American ships, 
but when the end of hostilities released our navy for 
other duty, Decatur, now become an admiral, returned 
to the scene of his early exploit and speedily and 
finally convinced them of the error of their ways. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MAP AND THE SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 

THE crowning achievements of Jefferson's term 
had to do with terra firma rather than with 
the sea ; but they were equally picturesque and 
undemocratic. It was providential that his many 
theories neutralized one another. Although a linger- 
ing remnant of the old landed aristocrat's prejudice 
against trade made him deplore commerce as " cor- 
rupting," his dislike of war bade him argue that in 
trade, not in guns, lay our greatest national weapon. 
Common sense also made him see how necessary trade 
was to the development of the country. He therefore 
planned to invade close-shut Asia with the American 
commerce that did not as yet exist, and he joyfully 
set out to find a road for it through an unexplored 
wilderness. 

The blank spaces on the map teased him. They 
were still vast, despite exploring expeditions that had 
come to America in ever-increasing numbers since 
Sebastian Cabot's initial voyage of 1497. Such ex- 
peditions along the coast had been too numerous even 
to mention. Those that penetrated the interior fell 
into interesting groups as they multiplied with the cen- 
turies. The four principal ones of the sixteenth cen- 
tury were Spanish, and the territory they pierced was 
that of our Southern and Southwestern States. In 
the seventeenth century they were French, and their 
wanderings covered the region approached by the St. 

4^ 



AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 47 

Lawrence and the great lakes. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury the names connected with such enterprises were 
unmistakably English. The area was smaller, but it 
was explored more in detail and opened up to perma- 
nent settlement. This was the fertile country drained 
by the Ohio and other eastern tributaries of the Mis- 
sissippi. With the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury interest was transferred west of the Mississippi 
to the wide spaces designated on maps of the day by 
three imagination-haunting names, Oregon, the Span- 
ish Territory, and Louisiana. 

Progressive Americans were convinced even then 
that some time in the future these must be ours " by 
law of nature." But conservatives, on the other hand, 
were aghast at the idea of annexing land, especially 
beyond the Mississippi. The country's chief danger, 
they said, was its unwieldy size. New England felt 
that such a course would justify her in withdrawing 
from the Union. But to all alike the map was an un- 
solved enigma. The Stony Mountains loomed large 
upon it as a barrier between Louisiana and the other 
two tracts. The Missouri River, draining the eastern 
slopes of this vast range, was a well-established fact. 
Jefferson thought that indications pointed to a river of 
equal importance on the western side, flowing into the 
Pacific. 

To a mind like his such speculations were irresistible. 
While he was minister to France he talked with young 
John Ledyard, the American traveler, then in Paris, 
and so worked upon his imagination that he gave up 
his project of Egyptian exploration to attack the mys- 
tery of his own continent. Together the two planned 
that Ledyard should cross Siberia far to the north, 
sail from Kamchatka to the coast of America, follow 
the coast southward until he came to the mouth of this 



48 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

unknown river, ascend it to its source, and then, cross- 
ing the continental divide to the headwaters of the 
Missouri, sail down to the Mississippi and civilization. 
In his capacity of minister to France, Jefferson gave 
Ledyard a passport to St. Petersburg, that he might ask 
leave of the Empress Catharine to cross her territory. 
It was granted, and Ledyard had reached Siberia when 
the permission was suddenly revoked, and he was or- 
dered out of the country on suspicion of being a spy. 

Four years later Captain Gray, in command of the 
ship that first carried the Stars and Stripes around the 
world, discovered the mouth of the Columbia. This 
confirmed Jefiferson's theory, but the upper reaches of 
the river and its relation to the Missouri remained as 
mysterious as ever. At intervals, when his republican- 
ism slumbered, Jefferson's mind played with the prob- 
lem, and before he had been President many months 
the expedition of Lewis and Clark began to take 
definite shape. 

Its objects were threefold, as the President out- 
lined them to Congress : to establish trading relations 
with the Indians of the Northwest; to search out a 
route for commerce with Asia; and to add to the 
world's geographic knowledge. On the map the 
transit of the eye and mind from the Pacific coast to 
densely populated Asia is instantaneous and inevitable. 
Asia spelled commerce, and so did a fur trade with 
the western Indians. Knowing the nature of Con- 
gress when it came to a question of appropriations, 
Jefferson was diplomatically practical and enlarged 
upon this point, though personally he found the scien- 
tific features of the expedition more interesting. 

He placed at the head of it two young army officers 
who had between them ideal qualifications for the 
task. Meriwether Lewis had seen military service, and 



AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 49 

had been acting as Jefferson's private secretary. He 
had thus learned to understand thoroughly his chief's 
desire and habits of mind. William Clark was a 
man of less education who had served under " Mad 
Anthony " Wayne. With the exception of one Negro 
servant, the whole party, numbering about thirty, was 
enlisted in the army before it set out in the spring 
of 1803 in a blaze of social glory. Mrs. Madison and 
the ladies of fashion provided every possible comfort, 
from that kindly impulse that prompts giving men 
doomed to execution a last good meal. 

But the fear that " they might never return from 
the distant land of savages " proved unfounded. 
After a silence of years they emerged from the wilder- 
ness with their tale of adventure that makes pulses 
quicken even yet. How it must have moved those 
who heard for the first time of the marvels and perils 
of the Western region can be easily imagined. Both 
the commanders kept diaries. Lewis's trained style 
pales a little beside that of Clark, whose pen, like his 
sword, was coercive and drove panic-stricken letters 
into words perfectly intelligible to the sense, if not to 
the eye. 

His account has in it the very ripple of the Missouri 
on that May morning when they set off up-stream in 
a " jentle brease " past the huts of French habitants, 
" pore, polite, and harmonious." That jabbing pen 
of his had strange power to make pictures and draw 
character. Reading on, we seem to accompany the 
travelers into the unsettled country, rich in game, but 
purgatorial with all manner of crawling, biting insects. 
Camping with them on a sand-bar and watching while 
they sleep, we see the stealthy Missouri eating it away, 
piece by piece, above and below. We call out in 
horrified alarm, and the company has barely time to 



50 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

take to its boats before the last square yard of earth 
vanishes in a dizzying whirl of muddy waters. We 
stand beside brave Sergeant Floyd when he is " taken 
verry bad all at once with a Biliouse Chorlick," and 
see him die " with a great deal of composure " ; and 
we spend five winter months with the party inside a 
stockade at Fort Mandan, sixteen hundred miles above 
the mouth of the Missouri, where perils of flood and 
field are exchanged for a game of exciting diplomacy 
with the Indians and with French and British fur- 
traders. 

Beyond this point, where they wintered, all was un- 
known. In the spring they set forth again to push on 
through a region of fantastic mountain grandeur, over 
ground whitened by alkali, or black with coal, or red 
and yellow, or all four colors at once. Monster ani- 
mals invaded their camp at night. Rattlesnakes and 
mosquitos added efifective torment by day. A worth- 
less Frenchman and an infant three weeks old were 
taken into the party, vicariously welcome for the sake 
of the Indian wife and mother, who had been captured 
in childhood from a Rocky Mountain tribe and was 
relied upon as guide. With her baby pressed close to 
her heart and the welfare of the party on her shoul- 
ders, she slipped into her place on the march and 
" made good." 

The dividing of the river left them at a loss which 
fork to follow. It split again, this time into three 
streams; and it was almost mid- August when Lewis 
stood at last beside the icy spring in which the Missouri 
takes its rise. On the very same day a stream was 
found flowing toward the Pacific. Caching boats and 
surplus stores, the party began crossing the heavily 
timbered Bitter Root Mountains, where the whole 
world seems to be crumpled in a serie: of pre- 



AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 51 

posterous ridges. Sacajawea, the Indian mother, 
opened friendly relations with a band of Shoshones, 
who directed the party and sold them horses. But 
after this snow-storms came to blind them, game dis- 
appeared, and they were obliged to eat some of the 
horses and set the others free. Finally, after great 
hardships, they came into a region where Indians knew 
the commodities, — and the wiles, — of white men, 
and on November 7, 1805, Clark jubilantly wrote in 
his diary, "Great joy in camp, — we are in sight of 
the ocian! " following this by a tale of seas that " roled 
and tossed uproriously " and made several of the party 
very sick. 

They retraced their steps, and before the end of 
March, 1806, the principals made their report in per- 
son to the President. Neither of these young men did 
anything more that is noteworthy, which is perhaps 
not strange. They had done their full share by suc- 
cessfully piercing the continent from tide-water to tide- 
water. That a woman and a baby helped them, and 
a Negro and a dog loyally followed every step of the 
way, adds to the wonder and the human interest of 
their achievement. Yet it is disappointing that both 
gallant leaders faded from sight, one of them under 
a cloud. Made Governor of Louisiana Territory, 
Lewis died a year or two later in a squalid cabin either 
by murder or his own hand. The fate of Clark was 
not so dramatic. He, too, was Governor of the 
Louisiana region after it became Missouri, and later 
served as Indian agent, vanishing finally into total 
obscurity. 

Their places were quickly filled by others. The 
march of the West was too rapid and buoyant to halt 
either to search or to mourn for those who served it 
and dropped out. Far-off Oregon was soon to claim 



52 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the attention of the country, but now interest centered 
upon a West nearer home, the Louisiana Territory, 
which stretched between the Mississippi and the Stony 
Mountains. 

For three hundred years the threads of national 
destiny had been twisting and knotting themselves 
about the mouth of the great river while Spain and 
France, and later England, played the game of empire 
with that rich delta as the stake. The devious paths 
of exploration early sought it out. In 15 19, Alonzo 
de Pineda gave the river a Spanish name, and twenty- 
three years later De Soto went to his last long rest 
beneath its waters. Then the French claimed it. In 
1682, La Salle and his men, carrying the cross and 
the banner of St. Louis down the stream, had buried 
leaden plates on its banks after the French custom, 
and taken possession for their king of all lands watered 
by it and its tributaries. Their high-sounding phrases 
reached no further than those of the Spaniards before 
them. The river flowed on unchanged even while their 
chants of Te Deum and Exaudiat, the sharp crack of 
firearms and their throaty cries of " Vive le roi ! " 
frightened the waterfowl that rose with a great flutter 
of wings, to settle again as soon as the echoes died 
away. 

But still their act was potent. It made the little 
band of wanderers less homesick; and from that time 
on French loyalty grew among the few and scattered 
colonists, while French pride and avarice at court kept 
tight hold upon the distant valley. A hundred tricks 
of speech and name testify that the dwellers on the 
river were more French than Spanish, though in the 
lapse of years, as France and Spain both came to look 
upon America with a fierce and instinctive greed, they 
were ordered to shout now for Louis le Roi, now for 



AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 53 

Carlos el Rey, at the whim of ministers or the exigen- 
cies of war. 

There were martyrs who dared protest, whose sen- 
tence of hanging no man, black or white, could be 
found to carry out, and whose death at the hands of a 
platoon of Spanish soldiers was witnessed only by 
blind walls and empty streets, the whole sorrowing 
population of New Orleans having streamed sadly 
through the gates into the open country to get beyond 
earshot of their guns. 

When the game of empire went against Spain finally, 
in 1763, she was forced to cede to England all her 
territory lying east of the Mississippi and north of 
latitude 31 ; but she kept for herself the Floridas and a 
strip of land safely covering both banks at the mouth 
of the river. At the end of our Revolution the land 
Spain had transferred to England passed from Eng- 
land's hands into our own, and became the North- 
west Territory, 

Meantime four of the States, — Connecticut, Massa- 
chusetts, North Carolina, and Georgia, — laid claim 
to portions of it; shadowy, overlapping claims stretch- 
ing westward through space and backward through 
time to kings' patents or original discovery; as coolly 
impudent as New York's claim to another bit of land 
as legal heir of the Indian tribes. One after another 
these claims had been waived in order that the States 
might unite and adopt the Articles of Confederation. 
During the period of government by Congress the 
Northwest Territory was held in common, for the 
good of all ; and when the time came to mend the Ar- 
ticles of Confederation or break the bond, interest in 
this vast territory, and the certainty of losing it if they 
parted company, became the strongest motive for keep- 
ing the quarrelsome States together. 



54 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Historians of the Convention of 1787 may there- 
fore paraphrase Moltke's bluff axiom that " geography 
is three fourths of miHtary history," since geography 
won our battle of nationality. It did more. It fur- 
nished the wherewithal to run the nation. The coun- 
try was bankrupt, but in a flash of inspiration the 
leaders saw their opportunity and seized it. Properly 
handled, even the uncertainty enveloping the great 
tract might be made an asset. No government could 
be maintained without funds. It was equally certain 
that money could not be coined out of thin air, though 
it might be coaxed from the earth. So with true 
Yankee ingenuity they seized upon this Pandora's box 
of conflicting claims and boldly turned it into the 
national money-chest. 

But Spain, holding its little strip of territory at 
the mouth of the Mississippi, had a strategic position. 
Only by free use of the river could the Northwest Ter- 
ritory hope to develop, and Spain seemed inclined to 
make trouble. In addition, a large number of people 
in the Eastern States could not be persuaded to regard 
the country west of the Alleghanies seriously except 
as a threatening menace. Hamilton, intent on issuing 
a currency based on Western lands as security, might 
point out the wisdom of keeping the Mississippi open 
to American commerce, and Jay wax eloquent over 
" extensive wildernesses, now scarcely known or ex- 
plored," " vast lakes and rivers whose waters have for 
ages rolled in silence and obscurity to the ocean," that 
would yet " hear the din of industry, become sub- 
servient to commerce, and boast delightful villas, 
gilded spires, and spacious cities rising on their 
banks " ; but there were others as patriotic who turned 
away from the glittering mirage to look cold facts in 
the face. They knew that there was not enough com- 



AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 55 

merce west of the Alleghanies to keep open a trout 
brook, and were convinced that if those gilded cities 
ever materiaHzed, it would be a sure sign that the 
Union was too unwieldy to endure. They knew also 
that even in colonial times the cod-fisheries off the 
coast of Newfoundland had yielded threefold : choice 
fare for the Catholic countries of southern Europe, 
coarser, but wholesome, food for native Americans, 
and an abundant, if unsavory, refuse that was bought 
up eagerly by planters of the West Indies to keep life 
in their slaves. To their eyes such an industry 
dwarfed in importance any possible golden dream of 
Mississippi commerce. If something must be con- 
ceded to the demands of Spain, let her have the con- 
trol of the mouth of the Mississippi despite Franklin's 
homely protest that it would be cheaper in the end to 
buy Spain's interest outright ; that a neighbor might 
as well ask him to sell his street door. 

These unimaginative 'patriots were blind to the fact 
that even during the Revolution, when the fishing 
trade was cut off, leaving the poor blacks of the 
Antilles to starve, another stream of commerce, small 
and sluggish at first, had begun to move westward and 
southward, and was still moving and growing. Be- 
fore the Revolution the number of white settlers west 
of the Alleghanies, but within the limits of the thir- 
teen original States, had been few. But emigration 
persisted even during the years of war, and when 
peace was signed the few hundreds had increased to 
thousands. These people were clearing and tilling 
fields, and their produce, with furs from the wilder- 
ness, was being loaded on flatboats and floated down 
small streams into larger ones, then on through the 
Ohio and Mississippi to the sea. From New Orleans 
an enterprising merchant might take passage to Cuba 



56 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and make more sales, and, returning by way of Balti- 
more or Philadelphia, invest his gains in goods that 
could be transported by wagon across the Alleghanies 
and sold to his neighbors in the " back country." 

Such a round trip lasted from four to six months, 
and offered a fair equivalent in education for the 
schools and opportunities of the East. In the course 
of it the traveler saw many kinds of life, met many 
people, and heard many things, some of which were 
not soothing to his patience. He learned, for in- 
stance, that to transport his goods across the moun- 
tains by wagon ate up one third of their value; that 
he could send them down the Mississippi for only one 
twentieth of their cost, but that before reaching the 
mouth of the stream they must pass through one hun- 
dred miles of foreign territory and run the gantlet 
of Spanish officials, who made increasingly rapacious 
demands. He learned, too, that his co-citizens of the 
Atlantic seaboard, especially those of New England, 
were so hypnotized by the sea that they would pay 
no heed to his protests. This coldness the men of the 
West were quick to resent, claiming that the East was 
willing to exploit their region, but not to give it fair 
play ; and that this attitude was the same that England 
had held toward her colonies. 

The Democratic Republicans sympathized with the 
Western point of view more heartily than did the 
Federals ; but they were beset by a multitude of prob- 
lems, all of them pressing and many of them nearer 
home. They were therefore inclined to look leniently 
upon Spain's demands, if by so doing they could gain 
advantage elsewhere. Spain, growing bold, claimed 
exclusive control of the Mississippi as far north as 
Kentucky, and our ministers abroad were on the point 
of conceding the right as of little moment when in 




"^ 





•/ 
(■ 






^ 




■- 






l-V- 


\. 


^ 




AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 57 

1802 rumor came that the storm-tossed province of 
Louisiana had once more changed allegiance and was 
French again by secret treaty, Napoleon having bribed 
the Spanish king with the shadowy Kingdom of 
Etruria in Italy. 

This roused dwellers in the Mississippi valley to 
another protest, for they realized that while Spain was 
not an agreeable neighbor, her colonial strength had 
departed, and the United States could suffer little 
beyond temporary annoyance at her hands. With 
France it might be otherwise, for the Revolution had 
set many refugees upon our shores who were still 
French at heart, no matter what their fortune; and 
Napoleon must be reckoned with, whose dream of 
empire, expanding with success, might no longer be 
confined within a single hemisphere. 

Jefferson's mind was hospitable to the Western point 
of view; but he was a man of peace, fully convinced 
that the stars in their courses would bring about our 
ultimate ascendancy in the IMississippi valley. He 
was inclined to leave the matter exclusively to them, 
putting off the day of reckoning " till we are stronger 
in ourselves and stronger in allies," and " especially 
till we have planted such a population on the IMissis- 
sippi as will be able to do their own business." He 
recognized the river's commercial importance, and 
wrote to Robert R. Livingston, then our minister at 
Paris, that New Orleans was the one spot upon earth 
the possessor of which was our natural enemy, since the 
produce of three eighths of our territory must pass 
through it to go to market. Thinking it time to act 
if France was actually in possession, he instructed Liv- 
ingston to try to purchase New Orleans with the 
small strip of ground on which it is built. 

There was a tremendous outcry. It was not only 



58 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

undemocratic, but ruinous both in money and policy. 
The United States already owned too much territory. 
Every added inch increased the danger of our un- 
wieldy republic breaking into pieces. Besides, — and 
this Jefferson's political opponents emphasized with 
undoubted relish, — what had become of the strict con- 
struction of the Constitution about which the Repub- 
licans were forever prating before they came into 
power ? Proposing to buy a foreign city was a greater 
liberty than Federals had ever dreamed of taking with 
the sacred document. 

Jefferson was clear-sighted enough to see the point 
and partizan enough not to enjoy it. " The less that 
is said about any Constitutional difficulty, the better," 
he warned his supporters. He tried to draw the sting 
by buying just as little land as possible, — so little 
that the manifest advantages would outweigh the in- 
discretion. Yet realizing that a destiny larger than 
party was moving upon the Western waters, he stuck 
to his plan to buy New Orleans, and sent James Mon- 
roe over to Paris to help Livingston in the purchase. 

The French had received Livingston's opening sug- 
gestion with disdain. " Only spendthrifts sell their 
lands," he was answered. How far this show of 
virtuous indignation was genuine he could only guess. 
Talleyrand's compound of genius and duplicity was 
particularly baffling to the Americans. They knew by 
experience that he was not above demanding a personal 
bribe, and that a rebuff in no wise lessened the jaunti- 
ness of his bearing. They had encountered him offi- 
cially in the X. Y. Z. affair, and socially on our own 
ground when he visited America after making England 
too hot to hold him after being forced to flee the 
rigors of the French Revolution. Undeterred by the 
cold politeness of those who could not well refuse to 



AND 'SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 59 

receive him, he had shrugged his Gallic shoulders, ac- 
cepted our provincial attitude as a tribute rather than a 
rebuke, and walked through the homes of America as 
he had through the palaces of Europe, charming, ac- 
quisitive, and observant. 

Now he was back in power upon his own soil, where 
his methods were understood and applauded. It was 
Livingston's turn to be watchful. He was by no means 
confident, because it was understood that Napoleon 
had promised Spain not to turn Louisiana over to an- 
other power. This, however, might mean much or 
nothing. Livingston could see for himself that France 
and England were rapidly drifting toward war, and 
it took no gift of prophecy to foretell that in case of 
war Napoleon would stand in desperate need of money. 

Meantime Napoleon seemed bent only on taking 
possession of his American domain. He sent a French 
army corps to Haiti as a preliminary to garrisoning 
Louisiana. Livingston was prepared to fall back upon 
the compromise of a right of deposit at New Orleans, 
•with the privilege of holding real estate for commercial 
purposes, when the negotiation underwent a spectacular 
change of character and scope. 

Literally, Napoleon thrust Louisiana upon us. It 
was no skill of American diplomacy, but the acid of the 
Corsican's genius, working upon undeniable and un- 
pleasant truths, that caused him to change his mind 
without troubling to explain his reasons. Meeting 
Talleyrand by accident one April day, — it happened to 
be the day before Monroe arrived in Paris, — Living- 
ston renewed his offer. Talleyrand repeated his as- 
surances that his chief was firmly resolved not to sell 
New Orleans, since the province would be of small 
value without the town. Then he asked casually 
whether the United States cared to buy the province 



6o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and town together, and left Livingston speechless. 

The stars in their courses were working for America. 
The army corps sent to Louisiana by way of Haiti had 
been detained on the island by revolution and decimated 
by fever, and an opportune and very earnest report 
from one of his trusted agents made Napoleon medi- 
tate on the difficulty of holding Louisiana permanently, 
and hence on the folly of hampering himself in that 
far-off quarter while England and Austria were both 
menacing. If he lost the war with England, Louisiana 
would undoubtedly be the price. If England did not 
get it, the United States might acquire it in time by 
mere energy and growth of population. Here was a 
chance to thwart England, strengthen friendship with 
the United States, and obtain a goodly sum for his 
war-chest, all at the cost of surrendering something it 
was uncertain he could keep in any event. 

The skill and courage of the Americans lay in taking 
a gambler's chance and closing with the offer, though 
they had no real authority to do so. Monroe brought 
with him Jefferson's offer of $2,000,000 for New 
Orleans and the two Floridas, a very different proposi- 
tion. Livingston was inclined to regard Talleyrand's 
proposal as a jest, being unable to believe his ears. It 
was renewed two days later, however, in more concrete 
form by the French minister of finance, Marbois, whom 
Napoleon substituted arbitrarily for Talleyrand in the 
negotiations, perhaps partly out of distrust of his pre- 
mier, but mainly because Marbois had married an 
American, and, being an old friend of both Livingston 
and Monroe, was likely to reach quicker results. One 
hundred million francs was the price he asked for the 
province. Monroe, realizing that it was well to act 
promptly in dealing with Napoleon, shouldered the re- 
sponsibility and offered fifty. 



AND SHUTTLECOCK PROVINCE 6i 

Napoleon's two brothers, Lucien and Joseph, not yet 
aware of their own insignificance, heard of the pro- 
posed sale and attempted to remonstrate. Lucien in 
his memoirs has left an amusing account of the Corsi- 
can brothers, en vie intime, telling how Napoleon re- 
ceived them while seated in his bath, the water pleas- 
antly scented and whitened by eau de cologne. They, 
having previously conspired to meet in his rooms for 
the purpose, stood shivering on the edge of the pool of 
discussion, each unwilling to make the first plunge, un- 
til the call was nearly at an end, and the body-servant 
approached, bathrobe in hand, to envelop his master. 
Then Napoleon, who had probably long since divined 
the reason of their call, opened the subject himself, and 
the amiability of the interview gave way to heated dis- 
cussion, the apoplectic purple of Joseph's face and 
the white anger of the First Consul culminating in a 
final burst of temper and waterworks, as with great 
vivacity of gesture and total disregard of the element 
in which he sat, the great man raised himself in his tub 
and sank back again, splashing the choleric Joseph from 
head to foot. 

But all protests were vain. His resolve once taken, 
Napoleon hurried negotiations to the utmost. With 
characteristic Latin cunning, the boundaries were left 
vague " as a safeguard," and also because defining 
them exactly would require too much time. On the 
thirtieth of April, eleven days before he declared war 
against England, a compromise was reached. The 
treaty was signed soon afterward. Napoleon remarking 
in a flash of prophecy, " I have by this act made the 
United States so great that that nation will sometime 
humble the pride of England." In less than three 
weeks from Talleyrand's first hint, Livingston and 
Monroe reported to their chief that although they had 



62 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

exceeded his authorized expenditure by the bagatelle of 
$13,000,000, about the sum then required to run our 
government for a whole year, and had not secured 
Florida, they had at one stroke of the pen doubled the 
area of the United States. 

Jefferson's mingled emotions can be imagined. It 
was hard for his party principles, but his personal sym- 
pathies were all with the purchase. He knew the West 
would enthusiastically sustain him, and also that mere 
patriotic pride could be depended upon to stifle some of 
the opposition. 

Meanwhile the inhabitants of Louisiana were still 
living under Spanish rule, ignorant that they had been 
once more made French by secret treaty in 1800. It 
was in December, 1803, after the province had passed 
into American hands, that the French prefect Lausant 
arrived to inform them of the earlier transfer. As a 
finale to these astonishing gyrations in nationality, they 
had the dizzying experience of changing within twenty 
days from Spaniards into Frenchmen, and from 
Frenchmen into Americans, while flags were lowered 
and flags were raised, national anthems sounded, and 
polyglot proclamations were read in which, from the 
very nature of the case, they could take but a sullen in- 
terest. 



CHAPTER IV 

A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 

PRESIDENTIAL elections were a serious mat- 
ter. The Constitution originally provided that 
the man receiving the highest number of elec- 
toral votes should be President, and the one receiving 
the next highest number, Vice-President. This was 
ideal, but it did not serve the purpose. The first elec- 
tion after Washington retired was a disappointment; 
in the opinion of many the second narrowly escaped 
being a disaster. While the fright over this election 
was still upon the country, Congress proposed, and the 
States ratified, a constitutional amendment obliging 
Presidential electors to vote distinctly and unmistak- 
ably, upon separate ballots, for one man for President 
and another for Vice-President. Jefferson's second 
election was conducted under the amended law, and 
this time there was no uncertainty either in the vote or 
in the character of George Clinton, the man chosen 
to succeed Jefferson in case he should not round out 
his term of ofiice. The country shuddered even yet 
over what might have happened had death removed 
Jefferson while Burr was Vice-President. 

Personality counted for more in American politics 
than it can to-day, after the leveling effects of free 
schools and free criticism have been at work for a cen- 
tury pulling down heroes and exalting the rank and 
file of the voters. Every member of that earlier group 
of leaders, — Washington, with his unfailing rectitude; 

63 



64 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Adams, learned and hotly partizan ; Jefferson, with his 
many interests; Franklin, of broad charity and homely 
epigram ; John Marshall, " master in the common sense 
of Constitutional law " ; Randolph of Roanoke, body 
and fine intellect alike wrecked by drugs and self-es- 
teem ; and all the rest of them, — stand out individual 
and distinct against a blurred background of "the 
people." But of all the political characters of that day, 
or, indeed, from that day to this, there is not one quite 
so mysterious, so elusive, so apparently useless as Burr, 
weaving the dark pattern of his ambition into the coun- 
try's history. 

And because no man can live exclusively to himself 
either for good or evil, with every mention of Burr's 
name the figure of Hamilton rises, an avenging ghost. 
Even before that precocious young native of the West 
Indies walked into our military history at Princeton, 
a lad only nineteen, lost in thought, a cocked hat pulled 
down over his eyes while his hand rested upon a can- 
non that he patted absent-mindedly as if it were a 
favorite horse, he had done valiant work for American 
liberty with his pen. From the time he touched our 
shores to the July morning more than thirty years later 
when Burr's bullet laid him low he was a force to be 
reckoned with. And his was one of those natures, 
keenly alive on many sides, whose astonishing maturity 
of intellect did not snuff out the zest of life. He be- 
came " my boy " to Washington very early in his serv- 
ice; worked willingly at headquarters day in and day 
out, with a sober application equal to Washington's 
own, yet contrived to snatch from such never-ending 
drudgery youth's dear and fleeting joys. He brought 
gaiety even to Washington's mess-table, courted black- 
eyed Elizabeth Schuyler under the muzzles of British 
guns, and in the years of their married life together 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 65 

managed with all his prodigious labors to bend social 
graces as well as the solid qualities of his mind to en- 
riching their days and nights. Besides being a great 
statesman, he was " an enjoying gentleman," to use 
the quaint old phrase. Talleyrand, corrupt and ap- 
preciative, looked upon him with amazement. " II 
avait divine I'Europe," he said, which, from a Euro- 
pean of that day, about an American, was near the 
highest praise. Hamilton's management of the treas- 
ury, without breath of scandal or self-seeking, filled 
the Frenchman with even greater astonishment. " I 
have beheld one of the wonders of the world," he ex- 
claimed, — " a man who has made a nation rich laboring 
all night to provide his family with bread." 

To Americans such clean devotion to country was a 
matter of course, commendable, but no more than duty. 
But all acknowledged Hamilton's remarkable ability. 
Some even of his own party feared him. Adams's 
dread of him amounted to obsession. Many who ab- 
solved Washington from leanings toward monarchy 
charged Hamilton with deliberate intent to change the 
form of government. Jefferson, who opposed him 
politically and clashed with him personally, fully appre- 
ciated his power. When an old man at Monticello, 
looking back over the past, he used to say that the Re- 
publicans had done so and so; but if he spoke of the 
Federalists, he was apt to say that Hamilton took this 
or that ground. Taxed with this, he admitted, smiling, 
that it was quite true. He had fallen into the habit, 
he supposed, because he regarded Hamilton as the 
" master-spirit of his party." 

Burr also was a master-spirit, a name to conjure with, 
— in black magic. About the same age as Hamilton, 
he was, like him, slender of frame, delicate of feature, 
and refined in all small matters of taste. In his blood 



66 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

were warring elements : German aristocracy on his 
father's side; on his mother's, uncompromising Puri- 
tanism. Death deprived him of both parents when he 
was very young. His unusually quick wit conspired 
with the fact of a considerable inheritance to render 
his childhood less disciplined than it should have been. 
One is tempted to believe that his early trend toward 
evil was at the outset only the revolt of childish, un- 
trained logic against shams as he saw them in his elders 
and guardians. Being misunderstood, it quickly be- 
came the bravado of proud youth, and in manhood 
grew to larger villainies threatening to involve a con- 
tinent. 

At the age of sixteen he was leaving Princeton 
equipped with his diploma, disillusionment concerning 
his professors, and a precocious knowledge of dissipa- 
tion. In some directions all he craved of the latter 
was knowledge. For instance, he never gambled after 
an early success at billiards. At seventeen he was deep 
in the study of theology, from which he soon emerged 
with the conviction that " the road to heaven is open 
to all alike," and thereafter shelved the matter as un- 
profitable for discussion. 

His youthful ambition was military. The excite- 
ment, the sudden changes of fortune, and the opportu- 
nity it gave for indulging that bent toward mystery 
which he possessed, all attracted him. Despite his 
refusal to follow up that first success at billiards, the 
game of war offered gambling on a scale grand enough 
to compel his interest. In his first campaign, — with 
Arnold to Quebec in 1775, — he showed both audacity 
and bravery. He played the spy in priest's robes dur- 
ing the advance, and it was he who rescued Mont- 
gomery's body where it fell. 

Like Hamilton, he became military aide to Wash- 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 67 

ington, but the sober atmosphere of headquarters was 
not to his taste. The slow-moving rectitude of his 
chief's mind reproached and irritated this descendant 
of Jonathan Edwards, whose rapier-Hke intellect was 
already turning to devious ways. The General was 
coldly unresponsive to the questions about military 
science that thronged to the younger man's lips, and on 
his part he had no mind to remain a mere drudging 
clerk, as Washington seemed to expect. The relation 
soon came to an end, with resentment on the part of 
Burr, and on Washington's a distrust that after events 
failed to remove. Three times while he was President, 
Washington was waited upon by committees of Con- 
gress to urge Burr for the French mission, a sugges- 
tion he put aside with the remark that he had no confi- 
dence in the young man. 

Burr's undeniable military genius was for small mat- 
ters and sharp emergencies. He was blessed with a 
body needing little food and little sleep, while able to 
endure immense fatigue. He was a strict disciplina- 
rian, had a power of detecting wrongdoers that bor- 
dered upon the miraculous, and in a crisis he could 
exercise an almost serpent-like fascination over un- 
trained men, bringing them under perfect, if temporary, 
control. 

His resignation from the army appears to mark the 
time when he definitely broke with the established code 
of morals. Until then he seemed, intermittently at 
least, to follow St, Paul's injunction to prove all things 
in a half-hearted hope of finding somewhere one 
" good " enough to claim and hold his loyalty. But 
he made his choice and cast adrift, with no rudder save 
ambition. " The adventure is the best of it all," he 
told a young acquaintance, speaking of life in general, 
and that came to be his guiding motto. 



68 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

He established himself as a lawyer in New York 
State, where Hamilton was also practising; but his real 
interest was politics, law being only a tool to that end. 
Hamilton was diffuse and eloquent in argument; Burr 
chose to be concise and conversational. Hamilton was 
the heart and brains of Federalism; Burr aimed to be- 
come the leader of the Jeffersonian Republicans. 

He saw the chances for political combinations latent 
in our form of government, and set himself to use 
them. An instrument lay ready to his hand in the 
benevolent and patriotic society started by Hamilton 
some years before to offset General Knox's well-meant 
blunder, the Society of the Cincinnati, whose " aristo- 
cratic " tendency had set the country by the ears at the 
end of the Revolution. This younger organization had 
mouth-filling titles, Wiskenkee lodges, and Sachems, 
grand, high, and plain, that fitted into his plans ideally. 
Its sub-title also, " The Columbian Order," suited him 
to perfection. To it and to politics he applied army 
principles, demanding perfect obedience from the rank 
and file, adding company drill in the form of committee 
rule, thus lodging power in a few capable, if not always 
scrupulous, hands, and started Tammany on its long 
and vigorous career. That Hamilton himself had been 
the founder made its deflection to Democratic uses all 
the more delightful. 

By adroit management, by refusing to admit failure 
even when party fortunes were low, and by his hypnotic 
power over men, he became one of the most skilful, 
as he was one of the earliest, New York politicians in 
the unenviable sense of that word. He reached to 
within one vote of the Presidency, helping himself in 
the final climb by use of the injudicious pamphlet 
Hamilton wrote attacking John Adams. Hamilton 
thought Jefferson " an atheist in religion and a fanatic 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 69 

in politics," but of the two he vastly preferred him for 
President. Aside from personal prejudices, he pointed 
out that if Jefferson were elected, all responsibility for 
bad measures would rest with his party, while if the 
Federalists interfered and effected Burr's election, the 
whole responsibility would rest upon them. 

Jefferson, on his part, was little drawn toward Burr. 
Hamilton, watching them, thought that there was " a 
most serious schism between the chief and his heir- 
apparent." Yet they never quarreled. Burr dined at 
the White House when etiquette demanded, and also 
at the tables of the cabinet. His daughter became a 
general favorite in society ; but on the whole he was a 
disturbing element in Washington. More than one 
of the many duels of the period can be traced to his 
door, and he continued to lose in popularity. As the 
time for the next Presidential election approached he 
went to the President to learn his intentions. Jeffer- 
son replied coldly that he had not interfered in 1800 
and did not mean to do so now. 

Months before the election Burr's evil genius settled 
the matter beyond recalL. He and Hamilton had been 
singled out for antagonists from the beginning, and the 
story of their duel is too familiar to bear repetition. 
Hamilton's opinion that Burr was " in every sense a 
profligate " had been often repeated with details and 
amplifications. It is only astonishing that in a period 
of high feeling and strict adherence to " the code " 
their final encounter was so long delayed. Yet when 
Hamilton fell mortally wounded on that early July 
morning, his death seemed nothing short of a national 
calamity and Burr's act wilful murder. Men forgot 
the bitterness with which they had assailed Hamilton 
as a monarchist and an abettor of South American 
revolution. They remembered only his charming per- 



70 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

sonality, the immense services he had rendered the 
country, and his magician's success in making a sound 
financial credit for the nation out of doubts and debts 
and an unexplored wilderness. " No one wished to 
get rid of Hamilton that way! " John Adams declared, 
shocked into sincere and regretful speech. 

Burr returned to his home after the duel apparently 
unmoved. A kinsman arriving from a distance to 
breakfast with him had no inkling of what had oc- 
curred, and on resuming his journey could not credit 
the news, so sure was he from evidence of his own 
senses that it was a lie. 

" The subject in dispute is, which shall have the 
honor of hanging the Vice-President? " Burr wrote his 
daughter, after the grand juries of both New York and 
New Jersey found indictments against him. Seeing 
that the storm of denunciation continued unabated, he 
left his house at night by water and disappeared for a 
time. But with the reopening of Congress he was on 
hand, took his seat as presiding officer of the Senate, 
and discharged his duties throughout the winter, 
though a fugitive from justice and under indictment 
for a capital offense. 

The fantastic situation reached its climax when it fell 
to his lot to conduct the impeachment trial of a Justice 
of the Supreme Court before the Senate. The spec- 
tacle of this malefactor thus engaged must have caused 
laughter among the immortals. Mortals, however, 
were impressed, he bore himself with such dignity and 
composure. A reaction set in, and for a time the duel 
was almost forgotten in admiration of his conduct of 
the trial " with the impartiality of an angel and the 
vigor of a devil." For a moment this admiration 
changed to emotion, even to tears, when, two days be- 
fore his term as Vice-President ended, he took leave 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 71 

of the Senate in a short speech grave to the point of 
coldness. " It was the solemnity, the anxiety, the ex- 
pectation and the interest which I saw strongly painted 
in the countenances of the auditors that inspired what- 
ever was said," he explained. " I neither shed tears 
nor assumed tenderness; but tears did flow abun- 
dantly." 

Jefferson was undoubtedly glad to have him out of 
his official family. A Vice-President hanged for 
murder would not have been an edifying spectacle to 
present to the nations, but a Vice-President guilty and 
going unpunished was an object-lesson even less de- 
sirable. 

A month later Burr went into the South. His er- 
rand is even yet a subject of doubt. In that day of 
slow and difficult communication his projects and his 
progress were shrouded in eloquent mystery. Yet he 
traveled in a state befitting one who had held high 
office. " My boat," he wrote his daughter, " is, prop- 
erly speaking a floating house." And when he reached 
the rich and settled regions of the lower Mississippi, he 
chose his society with the regal assumption that he 
would be welcome. " During the residue of my voyage 
to Orleans, about 300 miles, I shall take breakfast and 
dinner each day at the house of some gentleman on 
shore. ... I take no letters of introduction ; but when- 
ever I hear of any gentleman whose acquaintance or 
hospitality I should desire, I send word that I am com- 
ing to see him, and have always met a most cordial re- 
ception." 

To all these people he told variations of one story. 
To an angular major-general of Tennessee militia 
named Andrew Jackson, whom he visited at Nashville, 
he talked about Spanish aggression in the Southwest. 
For the benefit of Harman Blennerhasset, an excitable 



72 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Irishman who lived with his young wife in a fool's 
paradise on an island near Marietta, Ohio, he hinted at 
interesting conspiracy. To others he explained that 
his sole intention was to buy and colonize a large tract 
known as the Bastop lands on the Washita River. To 
General Wilkinson, the highest military officer of the 
United States, and incidentally in the pay of Spain, he 
unfolded a scheme of a new Western empire made up 
of Mexico and the dissatisfied Southwestern States. 
He had known Wilkinson of old and did not over- 
estimate his loyalty. To no one, however, did he com- 
mit himself definitely. Perhaps he had not mapped 
out, even in his own mind, the limit of his desires. He 
was an opportunist, with a leaning toward surprising 
coups, and in this first trip he may have been merely 
taking soundings, trusting to chance to determine the 
final outcome. 

The throne of Montezuma is believed to have 
gleamed as his ultimate goal, and there are indications 
that his plottings began even before he left the Vice- 
Presidency, — in fact, at the very time when he was 
impressing the country by his dignity in trying circum- 
stances. If these suppositions be true, the scheme in- 
cluded such spectacular events as the capture of Wash- 
ington, the kidnapping of President Jefferson, and tam- 
pering with the United States navy. The British min- 
ister at Washington averred that he dangled part of 
such a plot before his eyes, ofifering to put the new 
empire under protection of the British flag in return 
for help in taking New Orleans. But finding that his 
Majesty's home office refused to be dazzled, he turned 
with characteristic effrontery to Spain, attempting to 
get money with which to rob her of her own colonies. 

With such unlikely foreign help, the aid of young 
and wealthy adventurers in the East and West, the ac- 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 73 

tive cooperation of General Wilkinson, the credit of 
the rich Allston family of South Carolina, into which 
his daughter had married, and last, but not least, as- 
sistance from the priests of Texas and Mexico, he 
would take his seat upon the throne, make his daughter 
chief lady of the empire, his son-in-law heir presump- 
tive, Wilkinson general-in-chief, and Blennerhasset 
minister to England. The scheme is as grotesque as 
any nightmare, and this final touch encourages the sus- 
picion that Burr was playing upon personal vanity and 
enjoying his own sardonic joke. He was a knave, but 
no fool, and the idea of the gullible Blennerhasset in 
the role of ambassador to anything could never have 
entered a sane man's plans. But there was no harm in 
raising hope ; and he went his charming, insinuating 
way, scattering his poison and relishing the antics of 
his victims. 

His desire for the help of the priests made necessary 
marked attentions to the Catholics of New Orleans. 

Always alive to the dramatic contrasts of his posi- 
tion, he set himself to win their favor with a keen de- 
light in the situation. In view of his reputation as a 
libertine and his late prominence as a murderer, it es- 
pecially pleased him to visit the chaste ladies of t]?e 
Ursuline convent in company with the reverend bishop. 
He wrote his daughter a detailed and lively account 
of the visit. 

We conversed at first through the grates; but presently I 
was admitted within, and I passed an hour with them, greatly 
to my satisfaction. None of that calm monotony which I 
expected. All was gaiety, wit, and sprightliness. Saint A. 
is a very accomplished lady. . . . All except two appear to be 
past thirty. They were dressed with perfect neatness, their 
veils thrown back. We had a repast of wine, fruit, and 
cakes. I was conducted to every part of the building, . . . 



74 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

At parting I asked them to remember me in their prayers, 
which they all promised with great promptness and courtesy 
— Saint A. with earnestness. ... I will ask Saint A. to 
pray for thee too. I believe much in the efficacy of her 
prayers. 

Btirr's vague hints met with astonishingly cordial 
response. One resident of New Orleans promised 
$50,000 toward the enterprise. But to rail at condi- 
tions in the exaggerated and sometimes profane man- 
ner of the Southwest was one thing; it was quite an- 
other to follow words with action. The American 
privilege of free speech, bought and paid for, was easy 
to exercise while Burr sat opposite, listening with the 
absorbed interest that was his subtlest flattery. But 
after the fumes of wine had passed and the hypnotic 
charm of Burr's presence was removed, it was a more 
serious matter to count the cost of treason. 

Burr returned to the East, very possibly duped by 
the dupes he had made, a not uncommon form of 
auto-suggestion. August, 1806, saw him again jour- 
neying westward, this time accompanied by his daugh- 
ter. But sane and loyal men had had time to rally, 
and seeing the connection between Burr's plot and old 
jealousies of East and West, as well as old border 
resentments still smoldering against France and Spain, 
they denounced him in the newspapers. A few of his 
partizans were active. Blennerhasset set about a noisy 
attempt to raise a force of Ohioans, and Jackson, who 
should have seen under the tempter's mask by this time, 
called out the militia of western Tennessee, ready to 
invade either Florida or Mexico, though the United 
States was at peace with Spain. But even his im- 
petuous eagerness could not overlook certain dark 
hints, and he demanded assurance of Burr's loyalty. 

Society in the Southwest made much of the Burrs, 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 75 

but the authorities began to deal blow after blow. In 
Kentucky, Burr's name was twice presented to the 
grand jury for treason. Henry Clay, a young and al- 
ready distinguished lawyer, acted as his counsel. 
Though successful in this case, a doubt lingered in 
Clay's own mind, and he, like Jackson, demanded a 
statement of intentions, which Burr cheerfully fur- 
nished. One after another the men Burr had counted 
upon as supporters ranged themselves against him. 
General Wilkinson, having sounded his subordinate 
officers and found them hopelessly loyal, took the next 
logical step for a man of his caliber and turned in- 
former. Jefiferson, deeming the time ripe at last for 
Federal interference, issued a proclamation for Burr's 
arrest. He had been in possession of some facts and 
many suspicions as early as January, 1806, but thought 
the enterprise too fantastic for government action. 
" It is," he wrote, " the most extraordinary since the 
days of Don Quixote," " so extravagant that those 
who know his understanding would not believe it if 
the proofs admitted doubt." At that time he was in- 
clined to leave it to be dealt with by the state au- 
thorities. 

The President's proclamation was answered from 
all parts of the country by military organizations of- 
fering their services. The document itself, traveling 
westward from post to post, overtook Burr near 
Natchez as he was dropping down the Mississippi with 
the flotilla Blennerhasset had collected for him. These 
boats were supposed to contain settlers and supplies 
for the Bastop lands. Burr slipped his chests of arms 
overboard, surrendered gracefully to the acting gov- 
ernor of Mississippi, gave bonds, then vanished in 
disguise into the Indian country. A reward of two 
thousand dollars was offered for his capture, and a 



'je OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

month later he was taken into custody near the Spanish 
border in Alabama. 

On his arrival in Richmond, where the trial took 
place, he found himself overburdened with social at- 
tentions. He invited his daughter to visit him in jail. 

I have three rooms in the third story of the penitentiary, 
making an extent of loo feet. My jailer is quite a polite and 
civil man . . . you would have laughed to have heard our 
compliments the first evening. . . . While I have been writ- 
ing different servants have arrived with messages, notes and 
inquiries, bringing oranges, lemons, pineapples, raspberries, 
apricots, cream, butter, ice, and some ordinary articles. . . . 
My friends and acquaintances of both sexes are permitted to 
visit me without interruption, without inquiring their busi- 
ness, and without the presence of a spy. It is well I have 
an antechamber or I should often be gene with visitors. If 
you come I can give you a bedroom and a parlor on this floor. 
The bedroom has three large closets and is a much more 
commodious one than you ever had in your life. 

Released on bail, he accepted hospitality outside his 
hundred-foot suite, and Chief-Justice Marshall, who 
was to preside at the trial, found himself one day at 
the same dinner-table, to his manifest great embarrass- 
ment and the prisoner's covert glee. 

The attention of the whole country centered upon 
Richmond, and the nation's most famous men crowded 
the courtroom; the younger aspirants to political 
honor eager to see and take note, the older men bring- 
ing with them their burden of experience and their 
personal liking or distrust. Witnesses were sum- 
moned from far and near, for, as Jefferson pictur- 
esquely expressed it, Burr's crimes had been " sown 
from Maine through the whole line of western waters 
to New Orleans." Andrew Jackson was one of these 
witnesses. If Chief-Justice Marshall had had his way, 
President Jefferson would have been another; but he 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE yy 

refused to do more than send his papers. The right 
of a President of the United States to the custody of 
his own executive papers was a by-subject of discus- 
sion. Clad in black, with queue and powder, Burr 
was once more a model of correct dignity, and con- 
ducted his own case with consummate skill, the four 
eminent counsel he had retained being thrust quite 
into the background. The verdict of not guilty reached 
after a trial lasting weeks was at least technically cor- 
rect for it was proved that Burr had not waged war 
against the United States or adhered to its enemies, and 
that the levying of men that actually occurred had not 
taken place in the State where the trial was held. Poli- 
tics, of course, entered into it at every turn. It was 
claimed that the Federalists made Burr's cause their 
own and did everything to shield him. He had never 
been a Federalist ; but this shifty soldier of fortune had 
a way of enlisting the sympathies of every party in turn. 
Jefferson took a deep, some thought a vindictive, in- 
terest in the trial; but if personal dislike entered into 
it, he did not let it interfere to the hurt of others. 
" Remove the Major! " he exclaimed, when urged to 
retaliate upon an officer at Richmond who opened his 
house to Burr's friends. "Remove the Major! I 
would sooner divide my last hoe-cake with him." 

Again at liberty, Burr went to Baltimore ; but, feel- 
ing the chill of public sentiment against him, made a 
hurried departure for England. The story of his 
wanderings abroad, of his return to America and of 
his existence in ostracized poverty until death released 
him at the age of eighty, reads like some grim master- 
piece of fiction. Whatever the portion of malefactors 
beyond the tomb, that thirty years' martyrdom in the 
flesh, within sight of those he had hoodwinked and 
those he had envied, ought to count as no small part 



78 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

of his final expiation. Success, had it been possible, 
would have made him Emperor of Mexico; death as a 
traitor would still have been attended with some 
splendor and renown : but the sordid existence to 
which he was condemned for more than a quarter of 
a century had in it not one drop of balm. 

Yet he bore his reverses, as he had his success, with 
a malevolent grace all his own. One cannot help ad- 
miring his courage after all zest had died out of " ad- 
venture." For at first there was zest in the game. 
He cut an attractive figure abroad in society, some- 
times under a borrowed name, sometimes under his 
own. Invited at last to leave London, he had the 
audacity to claim that he was a British subject, which 
so puzzled the cabinet that they referred it to the law 
officers, thereby granting him a respite of some months. 
Afterward he wandered through Scotland, Sweden, 
Denmark, and Germany, always asked to move on, 
growing daily poorer. Learning that Napoleon had 
given his consent to the independence of Mexico, he 
hurried to Paris, to meet with studied coldness and 
have his passports refused at the instigation of the 
American minister. It was here that he received that 
oft-quoted message from Talleyrand, " Say to Colonel 
Burr that I will receive him to-morrow ; but tell him 
also that General Hamilton's likeness always hangs 
over my mantel," and even Burr's effrontery was not 
enough to carry him to the interview. 

Americans living in Paris would have nothing to 
do with him. One of them, however, lent him a little 
money upon which to live through the chill of a Pa- 
risian winter. His letters to his daughter, infrequent 
for lack of wherewithal to pay postage, mocked at 
want. " How sedate and sage one is with only three 
sous!" he wrote, recounting gaily the subterfuges by 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 79 

which he sought to outwit poverty. When remittances 
came he indulged in all sorts of speculation in the hope 
of recouping his fortune, invading for this purpose the 
opening fields of science and mechanics. His restless 
mind was as eager in these directions as that of Jeffer- 
son, with this important difference : Burr thought of 
them with himself as the center and beneficiary, while 
Jefiferson's interest was philosophic and impersonal. 

In one of his rare moments of affluence Burr or- 
dered a new set of false teeth, became intimate with 
the operator, watched the process closely, and when 
permission was finally given him to sail for America, 
bought and carried with him a thousand artificial teeth 
as a speculation. But the French ship on which he 
sailed had the bad luck to be captured by the British, 
and he found himself in London instead of America, 
with this strange luggage as his only asset. He placed 
his newly acquired knowledge at the disposal of his 
hosts, but they patriotically spurned the idea of having 
anything to do with French teeth. 

Reaching America at last under a name not his own, 
he made his way in wig and ill-fitting coat to the cus- 
tom-house to get permission to land his effects. The 
official on duty proved to be the son of an old enemy 
who would gladly have reported his arrival ; and when 
his books were opened, all bore the name of Burr, in- 
stead of the Arnot he had just signed. But there was 
no need for his elaborate precautions ; he and his mis- 
deeds were forgotten. War had just been declared 
against England ; even his two largest creditors had no 
eyes for his return. It was humiliating, but convenient. 
He slipped into an unimportant law practice in New 
York City. Clay, meeting him, refused his proffered 
hand ; and as such rebuffs were repeated, he drew more 
and more into himself. 



8o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Then came the great sorrow of his life. His 
daughter, saihng from Charleston to join him, fell a 
victim to one of the unexplained tragedies of the 
ocean. There were weeks of suspense; but when the 
last slender thread of hope was broken, he put away 
everything that could remind him of the one being he 
had really loved, and bore his grief in silence. He 
sank lower and lower in the professional scale into 
mere pettifogging practice. Women took care of him 
out of pity, as they had before out of love. He could 
make love even yet. In a last effort to mend his 
fortune he persuaded a rich widow to marry him. 
They soon parted, and when paralysis claimed him 
three years before his death, it was in the home of a 
humble and kindly matron that he awaited the final 
summons. 

It is a sordid story, and morally quite what he 
deserved ; but it is a sad story, too, with enough of 
doubt in it to indulge the hope that the blackest charge 
against his name is false, — that he did not deliberately 
plot to break up the Union for his own personal glory. 
He denied this at his trial, and in old age in the very 
presence of death. He admitted plotting revolution 
in Mexico, but as for the other, he asserted hotly that 
he would as soon have thought of dividing the moon 
among his friends. 

Feeling against Mexico was in the air. Jackson's 
eagerness to cross the border never called forth serious 
reproach. The time came when the feeling could no 
longer be restrained. Burr's biographer described him 
lying a paralytic, eyes blazing, newspaper in hand, 
when war was finally declared. " There ! You see," 
he exclaimed, " I was right. I was only thirty years 
too soon. What was treason in me is patriotism now." 

The final estimate of a man may not agree with 



A BALEFUL DON QUIXOTE 8i 

even his honest opinion of himself, and it is possible 
that this being of strangely warped and gifted nature 
was sincere in his own villainies, the victim of his own 
talents and eccentricities. Since the Almighty works 
with what to the finite mind seem such very poor tools, 
it ill becomes fellow-mortals to usurp day of judgment 
power; but it seems strange indeed that Destiny could 
not have used his youthful military talents and spared 
a bullet for him in some brilliant brush with the 
enemy. 



CHAPTER V 

AN AMAZING WAR 

JAMES MADISON, who succeeded Jefferson as 
President, was a warm personal friend of the 
latter, and had been for eight years his secre- 
tary of state. He was Jefferson's logical successor, 
too, according to the custom that had grown up of 
bestowing the office upon a man of great prominence 
and long service. His mind was of the same quality 
as Hamilton's, if less brilliant, and Jefferson used to 
declare that he was the one man in the Republican 
ranks who could answer that colossus of Federalism. 
Although now of Jefferson's party, he had begun his 
political life as a Federalist, and his admirers called 
him the Father of the Constitution because he was the 
author of the resolution that brought about the Con- 
vention of 1787, with its train of momentous conse- 
quences. Despite his ability and this grandiloquent 
title, he was personally insignificant and uninspiring. 

" What Presidents we might have had, sir ! " a 
Washington barber lamented soon after Jefferson went 
out of office. " Just look at Daggett of Connecticut 
or Stockton of New Jersey ! What queues they have 
got, sir! As big as your wrist, and powdered every 
day like real gentlemen, as they are. But this little Jim 
Madison, with a queue no bigger than a pipe-stem, sir ! 
It is enough to make a man forswear his country." 

Jefferson's face beamed on inauguration day. His 
friends noted this during the ceremonies at the Capitol, 

82 



AN AMAZING WAR 83 

where Madison read his address in the newly ftnished 
Hall of Representatives. " I do believe father never 
loved son more than he loves Mr. Madison," wrote a 
spectator. " And I believe, too, that every demon- 
stration of respect to Mr. Madison gave Mr. Jeffer- 
son more pleasure than if paid to himself." 

Short and wrinkled, with a cast in his eye, and a voice 
scarcely audible in public speaking, the new President 
did not make a good impression as he began his in- 
augural address. He was pale and " trembled ex- 
cessively," and the swaying motion of his body, and all 
the peculiarities of his poor delivery, including his air 
of having risen casually with no intention of making 
a speech and desiring above all things to escape, were 
as annoying as usual. But he gained poise as he pro- 
ceeded, and Jefferson was convinced that his friend 
would develop equal assurance in dealing with the 
problems of his administration. 

That night at Long's Hotel in Georgetown, where 
guests thronged to the inaugural ball, the Ex-President 
was in evidence again, joyous and smiling, a contrast 
to the dismal little figure in black standing beside 
Mrs. Madison, regal in her yellow velvet, pearls, and 
turban. Some thought her the abler, as she was the 
better favored, of the two. " As to Jemmy Madison," 
wrote Washington Irving, who had come with a host of 
others to seek office, — " ah, poor Jemmy ! He is but a 
withered little applejohn." 

To intimate friends this withered little man could 
talk delightfully, but in the presence of a crowd he re- 
treated into bored and almost repulsive silence. He 
had the misfortune to be born with the sober character- 
istics of an old man. Even in college he had been pain- 
fully correct and industrious, doing double work, and 
shunning the slightest appearance of frivolity. His 



84 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

president made the damaging assertion that during his 
whole stay at Princeton Madison never did an indis- 
creet thing. It was fortunate that his lively wife was 
at hand to supplement his lack of magnetism. 

Madison certainly did a very briUiant thing for his 
own career when he persuaded the young and attrac- 
tive Widow Todd to marry him. Blessed with energy 
and social tact, and that genuine love of her kind with- 
out which social tact is Dead Sea fruit, she had emerged 
from her Quaker chrysalis, donned the brocades of 
fashion, and entered heart and soul into his ambitions. 
She dressed his shrunken little queue with her own 
hands, saw that his black clothes were tidy and smart, 
and in every possible way, from such wifely service to 
the more subtle and intimate infusion of her own spirit 
into his apparent timidity and indifference, strove to 
make others recognize the qualities of greatness that 
she saw in her short and wizened husband. 

She brought eight years of experience to her new 
position, for she had often acted as hostess at the White 
House during Jefferson's term of office, and his demo- 
cratic experiments in the rule of " pcle mele" had 
pitted her more than once against angry diplomats and 
their women-kind. In such encounters her infectious 
good humor usually triumphed, just as it enabled her 
to keep her old friends, even those who dressed in gray, 
while making worldly new ones. A story is told of 
her entertaining a staid and worthy Quaker at dinner 
after her transformation into a woman of fashion, 
" Here 's to thy broad beaver, Friend Hallowell ! " she 
said merrily, raising her glass. To which he replied, 
letting his glance just sweep her bare bosom, to rest 
quizzically upon the paradise feather in her turban, 
" And here 's to thy absent kerchief, Friend Dorothy ! " 
But the strictest could not make serious objection to her 



AN AMAZING WAR 85 

frank and open pleasure in pretty things, and all were 
forced to admire the social generalship with which she 
helped on her husband's projects. She did not invade 
the realm of politics. That was her husband's busi- 
ness. Hers ended in the drawing-room. 

Madison's ability proved to be intellectual rather 
than executive. His long experience had been with 
public measures, not in directing men; and while 
Jefferson concluded the eight years of his Presidency 
with virtually the same cabinet he chose at the outset, 
Madison's counselors changed with the frequency of 
April weather, and, like April weather, not always for 
the better. One secretary of state, two secretaries of 
war, and one each of the navy and the treasury retired 
in haste, either voluntarily or by request, and there 
were other changes of a less painful character. As the 
years went on, the war department became the post of 
greatest difficulty; and after Monroe entered the 
cabinet as Madison's secretary of state, circumstances 
compelled him to act also as secretary of war at three or 
four separate periods. 

Since the National Bank, which had been established 
by Hamilton for a period of twenty years, was to end 
by law in 181 1, questions of finance would naturally 
have loomed large in this administration ; but in retro- 
spect Madison's term of office is occupied, to the virtual 
exclusion of other matters, with the preliminaries, the 
fighting, and the aftermath of the War of 18 12. The 
greater part of his first term slipped away in seasons of 
alternate hope and gloom. War had seemed almost 
inevitable when Jefferson retired from office ; then for 
a time the cloud appeared to be lifting. The Embargo 
had given way to the less stringent Non-Intercourse 
Act, which forbade American ships to trade with Eng- 
land or France, but permitted trade elsewhere. The 



86 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

British minister at Washington, over-sanguine, prom- 
ised that if this act were not enforced, his country 
would stop its tactics of capture and search and allow 
our ships to go where they would, unmolested. Madi- 
son, believing he had authority to make this promise, 
agreed to the terms, and American vessels to the num- 
ber of a thousand or more joyfully shook out their 
white sails and put to sea, only to find that the agree- 
ment was disavowed and that the English captured our 
vessels and impressed our seamen more vigorously than 
before. 

Such acts had already exasperated the country to 
the limit of endurance. At this renewal of them the 
war party clamored louder than ever. Henry Clay, 
who was now leader of the Young Republicans in Con- 
gress, made speeches bristling with aggression, to which 
Congress responded by voting to increase the regular 
army and authorizing the President to accept fifty thou- 
sand volunteers. 

Clay also urged the building of ten new frigates, the 
policy of the last administration having in efifect re- 
duced the navy to a fleet of gunboats for coast defense, 
with a tendency to capsize in anything but a mirror- 
smooth sea. But the feeling that a navy was danger- 
ous to a republic still persisted despite national satisfac- 
tion over the outcome of our war with Tripoli. Clay 
therefore dwelt artfully on the need for ships to pro- 
tect the mouth of the Mississippi. 

Monroe in the cabinet was as ardently in favor of 
war as Clay in Congress ; but Madison held off. Per- 
haps he was constitutionally averse to the great step; 
p^haps he felt that the country was ill prepared, what- 
ever the justice of her cause. His delay was not for 
lack of thought upon the subject, for three years before 
he became President he made a study of the British 



AN AMAZING WAR 87 

position as to neutral trade, and summed up its results 
in a pamphlet which he caused to be laid on the desk 
of every senator and member of Congress, a study 
that John Quincy Adams thought " not inferior to the 
works of any writer upon those subjects since the days 
of Grotius." 

The Young Republicans lost patience and declared 
that he " could not be kicked into a war," and, as his 
first term was nearing its end, cast about for somebody 
to nominate in his stead. They approached Jefferson ; 
but Jefferson had managed to keep up at least a fiction 
of peace while President, and showed no desire either 
to supplant his friend or to resume office at this critical 
moment. It has been asserted and denied that the war 
party finally forced Madison to action by this threat to 
nominate some one else. At any rate, war was de- 
clared; whereupon both sides fell to abusing him, the 
Young Republicans for having delayed so long, the 
Federals for daring to make war at all. They called 
it " Mr. Madison's war," and waxed sarcastic over the 
effrontery of one who " glimmered in harmless debate 
in times of peace " presuming to interfere in world 
politics. 

Some of them voiced the opinion of Europe that he 
was only the tool of Napoleon, who was using the 
United States as he would use Bavaria or Saxony, and 
had ordered Madison to stab England in the back 
" while her hands were tied." This European idea, 
absurd as it seemed in America, is scarcely surprising 
in view of the neat chain of circumstantial evidence. 
Napoleon's plans had materially aided our purchase of 
Louisiana, and the money paid for Louisiana had all 
gone to finance campaigns against England. The na- 
tions gathering to deal the French emperor a crushing 
blow could scarcely fail to see in this inopportune 



88 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

declaration of war another proof of secret understand- 
ing, and to frown upon a measure that distracted Eng- 
land from their common purpose and cut off food-sup- 
plies that otherwise might go to feed their own armies. 

The chances of the struggle, as seen from the far 
side of the Atlantic, appeared from the first more favor- 
able to the United States than when viewed nearer 
home. The poor harvests, the wretched financial con- 
dition of England, even the bad weather from which 
she suffered, helped by aggravating local distress. 
And the first news of actual fighting to reach Europe 
was Captain Isaac Hull's dramatic capture of the Brit- 
ish ship Gnerriere, which more than counterbalanced his 
uncle William Hull's surrender of Detroit without a 
blow, word of which was received at almost the same 
moment. British sea prestige was very dear to Eng- 
lishmen and very real to other nations. In conjunction 
with the disquieting events on the Continent, — Wel- 
lington's troubles in Spain and Napoleon's entry into 
Moscow, — the loss of the Giierriere assumed magnified 
importance, and Europe began to look upon this new 
war with growing respect. 

But it would have been a very bold prophet who 
could have predicted its course and final outcome, since 
the War of 1812 was one of those freaks of history 
wherein facts and figures and conclusions tumble over 
one another to bring about results at variance with ex- 
pectation and common sense. 

In the first place, the wrongs and injuries that led to 
it were not directed primarily against the United States. 
England and France were striking at each other's com- 
merce. Ours, being in the way, suffered the fate of the 
innocent bystander. For a time it appeared uncertain 
which of these countries was to be our enemy; yet the 
two had been at swords' points for years, and it would 



AN AMAZING WAR 89 

seem that the foe of one must necessarily become the 
friend of the other. 

After war was declared, it was found that New 
England, the part of the country that had suffered most 
from British depredations, was most bitterly opposed 
to it. In Rhode Island bells were tolled as for a fu- 
neral. In Massachusetts the governor proclaimed a 
fast. In Connecticut representatives of all the disaf- 
fected regions met in the Hartford Convention and pro- 
posed to break up the Union as a lesser evil. 

The United States was virtually without a navy, yet 
by some miracle our ships accomplished incredible 
things on every ocean of the globe ; while on land, where 
we had an entire population to oppose to an enemy that 
came by ship-loads a distance of three thousand miles, 
we seemed unable to fire an effective shot. 

Fighting ended by common consent, not because of 
our success in battle. Our one brilliant land victory 
did not take place until the signatures upon the treaty of 
peace had been drying eleven days. That treaty failed 
even to mention the chief cause of the war, and the out- 
come of the whole topsy-turvy struggle was to gain for 
us an amount of consideration quite out of keeping with 
the numbers involved or the intensity of the contest. 

Of course such inconsistencies are only apparent. 
As Admiral de la Graviere remarked, " Fortune was not 
fickle, merely logical." Injuries had made the inno- 
cent bystander an active participant, and protests and 
retaliation having failed, the only alternatives were war 
or complete withdrawal from the seas. 

England and France had treated our commerce in the 
same way, but England was the stronger. It had 
passed into a saying that when France launched a war- 
ship she was only adding it to the British navy, and in 
the long run England captured nine hundred of our 



oo OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

vessels as against five hundred and fifty seized by the 
French. England, moreover, added to injury of our 
trade the insult of habitually taking from our vessels 
such sailors as she chose to impress into her own 
navy. 

Although we had a whole population to draw upon, 
it was poorly trained for fighting, if, indeed, it could 
be said to be trained at all. The regular army was a 
mere handful, and its higher officers were most of them 
incapacitated by age or infirmity. The militia lacked 
everything a militia should have except individual cour- 
age. Hence it is not strange that what little fighting 
took place on land did not redound greatly to our credit. 
The young and enthusiastic war party had declared that 
there was no need for a navy ; this was to be a land war. 
But the fighting refused to stay on land ; even the long 
Canadian border, by a Hibernicism worthy of the other 
eccentricities of the conflict, resolved itself into a land 
frontier composed mainly of water, lakes Ontario, Erie, 
St. Clair, and Champlain, with the Detroit and Niagara 
rivers, being strategically of more importance than the 
unbroken wooded solitudes of northern Maine or New 
Hampshire. 

Our tiny navy, on the other hand, was well trained 
and waiting. Within an hour of receiving official no- 
tice of hostilities Commodore Rodgers put to sea with 
his five ships. Even the way in which victories seemed 
to roll out from this nucleus toward every quarter of the 
globe is not so mysterious, after all, for as in the case 
of the children of Israel at the Red Sea, the forces of 
nature took sides, and " a strong wind " helped the 
weaker party. 

One glance at the map that shows ocean currents 
makes this clear. Our frontier was very long. Begin- 
ning in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the 



AN AMAZING WAR 91 

Mississippi, skipping Florida, which still belonged to 
Spain, it began again at the southern limit of Georgia, 
extending from there to the Bay of Fundy, and then 
westward as far as population existed or hostilities 
might reach. 

The British owned two points from which to attack 
us. Bermuda and the islands of the Greater and Lesser 
Antilles gave them a base from which to menace New 
Orleans and the Southern coast; while Halifax, their 
main base in the Western Hemisphere, furnished them 
the point from which to attack our Northern harbors, 
strike at the fisheries of New England, and provision 
Quebec, England's principal depot for the Canadian 
waterways. But all British war-vessels ordered to 
America, no matter whether their destination was Hali- 
fax or the South, were obliged to sail directly toward 
our shores. 

Our navy's tasks were three : to keep British ships 
and supplies from reaching Halifax or entering the St. 
Lawrence ; to intercept those bound to the West Indies ; 
and lastly, to harass British commerce wherever found. 
The declaration of war put an end to the small remnant 
of trade that had managed to survive the Embargo, but 
it released American merchant ships and their well- 
trained crews for other work, and they speedily entered 
the navy or took out letters as privateers and began to 
prey upon British trade. The English reached our 
shores in numbers large enough to threaten and burn as 
far inland as guns could carry, but they were never rich 
enough in secrets of inlet and harbor to prevent dozens 
of such vessels slipping out to sea, manned by a class 
of sailors that Great Britain had already paid the un- 
welcome compliment of gathering into her own navy to 
the number of six thousand or more. 

So the " fir-built things with a bit of striped bunt- 



92 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ing at their masthead," as the Enghsh press derisively 
called our ships at the outset, grew under the stimulus 
of British guns into a very efficient navy that was heard 
and felt not only on our own Atlantic seaboard, but off 
the coasts of England, Ireland, and Portugal, the West 
Indies, the shores of British Guiana, at the easternmost 
point of Brazil, the Canary Islands, Chile, the Gala- 
pagos Islands, even in the Marquesas group in far-off 
Polynesia, — a confusion of hemispheres and continents 
unaccountable until it is seen how all were bound to- 
gether not only by patriotism, but by ocean currents 
and the winds of heaven. 

As was the case in our war with the Barbary pirates, 
these encounters might have taken place in the Middle 
Ages. Steam had indeed been harnessed to move upon 
the waters, but it had not been adopted for the battles 
of life. The one steamer on Lake Champlain was 
speedily remodeled with schooner rigging because its 
machinery gave endless trouble. The Fulton, proto- 
type of modern ironclads, with its ram and its few 
heavy guns, was launched only toward the end of the 
conflict, too late to influence the character of the fight- 
ing ; and torpedoes, tried and found wanting during the 
Revolution, were frowned upon not only because they 
failed in their purpose, but because they were a new and 
" dishonorable " mode of warfare. 

Sails were still the motive power, and seamanship 
was a matter of superlative skill nowhere shown to 
better advantage than in the three-days' chase that 
Captain Hull led five British commanders, using every 
artifice and expedient, venturing into perilously shallow 
water, kedging and towing when the wind failed him, 
and escaping at last in a heaven-sent squall of wind and 
rain. A month later he sought out one of the five and 
closed with him in the fight between the Constitution 



AN AMAZING WAR 93 

and the Gnerriere. The battles were for the most part 
duels of the old sea-rover type, echoes of which 
reach us across the century in words fast becoming 
obsolete and actions already consigned to melodrama. 
The fighting was no child's play. The clash of cut- 
lasses and grappling-irons, the falling of masts and 
entangling rigging, fierce courage, and a fiercer regard 
for the gallantry of war, as when the British Captain 
Dacre sent his ten Americans below so that they need 
not fight against their countrymen, — all these things 
went into it. A heart-warming amount of courage 
went into it, and a heartrending amount of carnage, 
too. When the Americans from the Wasp boarded the 
Frolic after forty minutes of fighting in tremendous 
seas, they found only four men alive, one seaman still 
at the wheel, and three officers, all wounded. War was 
indeed hell then as now, but it was a more showy and 
picturesque hell than the cold-blooded, machine-made, 
mathematically calculated inferno of twentieth-century 
battle. 

With the same long ancestry of sea-rovers behind 
them, British and Americans acquitted themselves, man 
for man, equally well. The difiference lay in their 
training. As a rule the Yankee sailors had practised 
their calling in varied forms since childhood, and could 
turn from setting sails to firing guns, from ship's car- 
pentry to hand-to-hand fighting, as occasion demanded. 
The British, trained to only one kind of sea duty, 
were less versatile.' The greatest difference lay in 
marksmanship; and in this English gunners were 
scarcely to blame, since a conservative and economical 
Government limited the number of shot that could be 
" wasted " in mere practice, making it so small that it 
amounted to none at all, while the Americans, with 
reckless extravagance, were continually aiming and 



94 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

firing their guns and practising at close range with 
small arms and single-stick. In the few cases where 
the preponderance of training and discipline was on 
the other side, as it was in the fight between our 
Chesapeake and the British Shannon, whose com- 
mander loyally disregarded hampering orders of Gov- 
ernment, victory remained with the best gunners. 

The Americans fought and captured, and fought 
again until in turn they were captured. Porter on the 
Essex, losing his consorts hundreds of miles from a 
friendly harbor, pushed on rather than turn back, 
doubled the Horn, broke up the British whaling in- 
dustry in the Pacific, and lived for a year and a half 
upon the enemy, capturing all his supplies, even the 
money with which to pay his officers, before the hour 
came when the Essex had to strike her flag. In the 
first six months of such warfare America captured 
from England as many ships as the latter had lost to 
the whole world in the previous twenty years. 

On the Canadian frontier the contest grew into one 
of ship-building as well as of ship-fighting. The prob- 
lem there was to get complete control of the inland 
waterways, and this could be done either by capturing 
the enemy's vessels or by forcing them into port and 
keeping them blockaded. When one side launched a 
ship, the other tried to outclass her by a larger and 
better one. The falls of Niagara made it necessary to 
maintain separate fleets on Lake Ontario and Lake 
Erie, thus doubling the labor. On Lake Ontario, 
where this preliminary warfare of planes and saws was 
carried to the greatest length, Kingston and Sackett's 
Harbor were the respective headquarters of the British 
and the Americans. On Lake Erie the Americans 
were at Erie and the British at Detroit, surrendered by 
General Hiill at the beginning of the war. 



AN AMAZING WAR 95 

All supplies for such ship-building contests except 
timber had to be brought from a great distance. For 
the British they came from England; for the Ameri- 
cans they were hauled by wagon from towns on the 
Atlantic coast by way of the Mohawk valley, over roads 
so bad that in effect the source of supply was farther 
removed than England itself. Crews also had to be 
provided on both sides, since war demands its sacrifice 
of human flesh and trees could not be fashioned into 
sailors. British tars could indeed be ordered from 
place to place, but Americans could not be sent 
to the Lakes against their will, since at that time 
men enlisted in our navy only for duty on particular 
ships. Population on our side of the Canadian border 
was sparse, and the service was one of hardship and 
small pay. Americans who took part in the battles 
in which these ship-building contests ended were there- 
fore a strangely mixed company, coming from a dis- 
tance, often at great personal sacrifice. It is said that 
of the 430 men under Perry in the battle of Lake Erie 
over one fourth were Negroes and many more belonged 
to the state militia. On his side Barclay had Indian 
sharpshooters and British regulars as well as the lake 
sailors and frontiersmen who made up a large propor- 
tion of both fleets. 

That these freshwater sailors fought with as much 
gallantry as their brothers on the high seas the story 
of the lake contests fully testifies. Perry, erect in his 
little cockle-shell of a boat, with his flag floating over 
him and shot plowing the water on all sides, is a picture 
that has stirred the blood of American school-boys 
for the last hundred years ; and there were other lake 
battles as creditable and picturesque, if not so dear to 
school historians. 

On salt water and fresh the sailors acquitted them- 



96 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

selves well, and won the stakes for which they played ; 
but rarely has there been greater discrepancy between 
prophecy and fulfilment than in the land operations of 
this War of 1812. The Young Republicans boasted 
that they would carry hostilities into Canada, capture 
it without an army, and dictate peace at Halifax. 
They counted upon the sympathy of Tories who had 
departed from among us during the Revolution, and 
also on help from French-Canadians, — vain hopes 
both. The French-Canadians showed that they felt 
themselves of an alien race, while loyal subjects of 
King George had seen nothing to change their minds 
since the battle of Bunker Hill. 

The American army proved as fruitful in disap- 
pointments as the navy was prodigal of glorious sur- 
prises. Here, also, fortune was merely logical. Mus- 
ters and training-days had degenerated into seasons of 
carousal or at best into political rallies. Each inde- 
pendent American prided himself on knowing how to 
shoot and was confident that he had courage to defend 
his home ; but he strongly objected to having any other 
man, particularly a neighbor whom he knew in the 
damaging light of horse trades and prayer-meetings, 
order him to do either. The militia, therefore, while 
made up of the best fighting units in the world, was 
woefully deficient. 

The small regular army was a mere skeleton, with 
many necessary parts missing. These were supplied 
by Congress with all possible speed. One of Presi- 
dent Madison's letters mentions " a very large batch 
of nominations for the army, of twenty-five thousand," 
which must be followed by others. As invariably 
happens when so many are called, few are divinely 
chosen to lead in battle. As Jefferson once said, " The 
Creator has not thought proper to mark those on the 



AN AMAZING WAR 97 

forehead who are of stuff to make good generals." In- 
stead of gaining victories, most of them lost reputa- 
tions. The few older officers who had served in the 
Revolution fared rather worse than the untried men. 
General Hull opened the ball by surrendering Detroit 
and the whole of Michigan Territory without firing 
a shot, was court-martialed and sentenced to be shot 
for cowardice, but pardoned because of his fine record 
in the earlier war. A second attempt at invading 
Canada a few months later, while not so disastrous, 
was equally barren of victory. General Wilkinson, 
squandering in ill-considered and fruitless movements 
the little honor he managed to bring out of his en- 
tanglement with Burr, was also court-martialed, and 
though acquitted, was never again trusted with a com- 
mand. Things were going very badly. Madison 
proposed to make Clay a general, since his ringing 
speeches for " Free Trade and Sailors' Rights " had 
power to rouse patriotism and inspire hope. 

" But what shall we do without Clay in Congress ? " 
was asked in remonstrance, and the question was en- 
tirely justified. Clay was needed in Congress and had 
a wider field of usefulness outside the army than 
within it. In time the war developed officers of true 
metal, like Jacob Brown, who was a born general 
although a Quaker farmer; young Winfield Scott, 
equally predestined to military glory; and William 
Henry Harrison and Andrew Jackson, whose exploits 
in this war carried them far on their road to the White 
House. But temporarily the outlook was not cheer- 
ful. 

Stonington, Connecticut, and Lewiston on Delaware 
Bay suffered bombardment and its train of conse- 
quences. Cape Cod saved its salt-works only by pay- 
ing a ransom. In the Northwest the situation was 



98 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

seriously complicated by Indian troubles, Tecumseh, 
the powerful Shawnee chief, having made an alliance 
with the British in the hope of ending once for all 
American encroachments upon Indian lands. It was 
against these party-colored allies that Harrison won 
his victory and his military reputation at the battle of 
the Thames. In the South also, in that wild region 
into which Burr had fled after his arrest, there were 
Indian uprisings. The Creeks lived wedged in between 
growing American settlements and the semi-hostile 
Spanish frontier, while to the south of the border were 
the troublesome Seminoles. These likewise seized the 
opportunity to regain, if possible, lost ground. Andrew 
Jackson and his Tennessee militia were sent to cope 
with them. Jackson had almost as much difficulty with 
his troops as with the savages, but, showing himself 
as fiercely impetuous in dealing with mutiny and 
famine as in striking the foe, gained a notable victory 
at Horseshoe Bend, and established once for all his 
character as a general to be obeyed. 

After all, only the very edge of the country suffered 
from the English. We were holding our own, though 
apparently doing nothing more. In truth, however, 
experience and careful drill were improving the army. 
The best man at this imperative, if monotonous, duty 
was the handsome General Scott, the most showy 
product of the war. A lawyer by profession, not one 
of his rather spectacular early experiences was more 
spectacular than the way he turned soldier, as heroines 
of ghost-stories turn gray, in a single night. It hap- 
pened, according to his own account, at Richmond, 
whither the budding lawyer had gone to attend the 
Burr trial, looking on it as a fine professional study, 
and by no means oblivious to the dramatic interest of 
the crowded court-room. The proclamation issued by 



AN AMAZING WAR 99 

President Jefferson after the Leopard's bold attack 
upon the Chesapeake reached Richmond late one night 
and threw the town into a state of excitement. It 
forbade the British warships entering American rivers 
or harbors for water or provisions, and called for 
volunteers. Scott belonged to no military organi- 
zation, but the next morning found him in the ranks 
of the Petersburg troop of cavalry, fully equipped, 
" having traveled twenty-five miles in the night, ob- 
tained the uniform of a tall, absent trooper, and bought 
the extra fine charger " upon which he rode. The un- 
certain course of the Government made him hesitate 
for some years between law and arms, but there was 
never any doubt of his real vocation, and the War of 
1 8 12 gave him experiences in active service ranging 
all the way from that of prisoner to successful general, 
not omitting an excursion into regimental medicine. 
In this he dealt with a threatened outbreak of cholera, 
supplanting the efforts of a scared and drunken sur- 
geon by his own heroic, if irregular, methods and liter- 
ally forcing his men to keep well " by command." But 
the greatest service he rendered was through persistence 
in drill and discipline. The Government trusted such 
matters entirely to Providence, furnishing no text- 
book or manual to its officers. Scott improvised one 
from a French work on infantry tactics, formed his 
officers of all grades into squads for practise, and 
drilled his troops mercilessly ten hours a day, if 
weather permitted, giving attention at the same time 
to sanitation and other details of camp life, of which 
his soldiers were as innocent as babes. The value of 
his work was seen, and his became the recognized sys- 
tem of the Government, remaining in use until the 
Civil War, when new inventions in guns and ammuni- 
tion macie changes necessary. 



100 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Matters dragged along with no decisive result until 
the summer of 1814, when a lull in the fighting on the 
continent of Europe enabled England to send to this 
country a larger force than she had hitherto been able 
to spare. In August the British Admiral Cockburn 
arrived off the coast of Virginia with twenty-one ves- 
sels, bringing with him General Ross and three or 
four thousand veterans of the Napoleonic wars. Un- 
able to prevent a landing of this force, Commodore 
Barney of the American squadron disembarked, to 
make what feeble resistance he could, with the aid of 
militia, at Bladensburg, a few miles from Washing- 
ton. He was taken prisoner, and the invading force 
marched on toward the capital. Such of its in- 
habitants as could get away fled, taking their most 
precious and portable valuables with them. The 
archives of the state department were hastily bundled 
into linen bags and carted off to Leesburg, thirty-five 
miles distant; and President Madison and his cabinet 
disappeared into the Virginia woods. The spectacle 
was not inspiring, yet it would have done the country 
no good had these high officials waited patiently at 
their desks to be taken into custody. Of the subse- 
quent burning of Washington, the less said the bet- 
ter for American pride or British glory. Ross of 
Bladensburg, to use the title conferred on the British 
commander by the regent, lost his life at Baltimore 
within the week. The invaders themselves were never 
very proud of the exploit, which was vehemently de- 
nounced in the House of Commons. A story easy 
to believe is told to the effect that the British officers 
sailing up the Potomac on this ungrateful errand un- 
covered as they passed the burial-place of Washington, 
and remained with bared heads until Mount Vernon 
faded from sight. But respect for his ashes did not 



AN AMAZING WAR loi 

prevent their reducing to ashes a large part of the city 
that bore his name. 

Mrs. Madison, cheerfully assuring her husband that 
she had the necessary " courage or firmness to re- 
main in the President's house " when he rode away to 
find what was left of the army, makes quite the most 
heroic figure in the picture silhouetted against the 
burning Capitol and the bursting shells of the navy- 
yard. " My friends and acquaintances are all gone, 
even Colonel C. with his hundred who were stationed 
as a guard in this inclosure," she wrote her sister. 
" French John [a faithful servant] with his usual activ- 
ity and resolution, offers to spike the cannon at the 
gate and lay a train of powder which would blow up the 
British should they enter the house. To the last 
proposition I positively object, without being able to 
make him understand why all advantages in war may 
not be taken." 

She waited until the enemy was virtually at the 
gate, delaying even then until Stuart's large portrait 
of Washington could be wrenched from its frame and 
added to her carriage-load of government property. 
" Our private property," she wrote, " must be sacri- 
ficed." Then she, too, drove away, and French John, 
forbidden to carry out his bloodthirsty desires, care- 
fully locked the White House door, deposited the key 
with the Russian minister, left his mistress's pet macaw 
at the house of a friend, and retired to Philadelphia to 
await the outcome. 

A storm that broke in tropic fury the day after the 
British entered Washington, unroofing houses that 
their torch had spared and burying some of the invad- 
ing soldiers in its ruins, did more to hasten their de- 
parture than they would care to admit. W^arned that 
the enemy had discovered his whereabouts, Madison 



102 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

spent the last hours of this storm in a miserable hut 
in the woods, where his wife joined him; and after 
all manner of danger was over the bedraggled admin- 
istration returned to take up its labors in such quar- 
ters as were still habitable. 

At the end of a campaign of a week or more in the 
neighborhood of Baltimore, productive on the Ameri- 
can side of Francis Scott Key's patriotic song " The 
Star Spangled Banner," and on the British side of 
little that endured, the English departed. They went 
South to join the relative and able lieutenant of Wel- 
lington, Sir Edward Pakenham, who had been sent 
to take Nev Orleans. 

The military situation at the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi was not reassuring, and the administration could 
do little to better it; but it did the one thing needful 
when it put in command that same angular Andrew 
Jackson who had already made several brief, but 
efifective, appearances in American history. He ar- 
rived on the second of December, and instantly set 
every local resource to work, denominating factions, 
and coercing all to united action in throwing up earth- 
works, mounting guns, and searching out every avail- 
able ounce of ammunition. 

The campaign lasted from the eighth of December, 
when the foremost of the British vessels anchored off 
the Chandeleur Islands, to the eighth of January, when 
the decisive battle of New Orleans was fought, 
eleven days after the treaty of peace had been signed at 
Ghent. 

Peace negotiations had indeed been going on almost 
as long as the war itself. The Czar of Russia offered 
his services as mediator, through John Quincy Adams, 
our minister to Russia, in September, 1812, virtually 
as soon as he heard of it. The delays of winter mails 



AN AMAZING WAR 103 

brought his friendly offer to Washington in March, 
1813. It was instantly accepted, and James A. Bayard 
and Albert Gallatin were sent to help Adams in the 
negotiations. They reached St. Petersburg late in 
July, and there learned that England had declined the 
Czar's offer. Hoping that the refusal was not final, 
they waited. In November England proposed to re- 
open negotiations, this time directly with the United 
States. British diplomatic dignity and the slow 
course of communication again delayed matters, so 
that it was early August, 18 14, before the English and 
American commissioners began their joint sessions in 
Ghent. Two more Americans, Henry Clay, leader of 
the war party in Congress, and Jonathan Russell, 
minister to Sweden, had been sent to join Adams, 
Bayard, and Gallatin. 

The mutual relations of these five men were not 
free from friction. Adams and Clay were especially 
uncongenial. Adams, son of the former President, 
middle-aged, learned, and precise, " one of the kind 
of men that keep diaries," was dominated by Puritan 
austerity. Clay, ten years his junior, hot-tempered, 
and brilliant, if only superficially educated, according 
to Adams's standard, was emphatically no Puritan, 
and outraged Adams's sense of fitness a dozen times 
a day. Russell, a man of only ordinary attain- 
ments, was under the influence of Clay. Bayard 
showed a disposition to stick to his own opinion when 
it differed from that of the rest. To the genial and 
patient Albert Gallatin fell the dif^cult lot of peace- 
maker not only in acrid private disputes among them- 
selves, but at the tedious formal dinners through which 
etiquette compelled the Americans to sit with their 
British antagonists and jest over the impossibility of 
ever agreeing. Thus weeks and months dragged on 



104 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

as they fought their way point by point to final settle- 
ment. 

The treaty as signed on the twenty-eighth day of De- 
cember was variously regarded. Clay thought it " a 
damned bad treaty," and did not hesitate to say so. 
In certain high quarters in England, on the other hand, 
it was looked upon as a great opportunity thrown 
away. " An able minister would have continued the 
war," Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Napier declared, 
" until the Northern States withdrew from the Union, 
making a separate treaty with England ; after which 
England could have raised the Negroes of the South, 
marched to Washington at the head of an immense 
force of armed and disciplined black regiments, and 
dictated peace, making Delaware an independent black 
State in alliance with England." So much depends 
upon the point of view ! 

The treaty was certainly a great gain over Great 
Britain's original demand that the United States set 
apart all the territory now occupied by Michigan, Illi- 
nois and Wisconsin, with large portions of Ohio and 
Indiana, to be a buffer between Canada and the Union, 
and for the perpetual use of the Indians; that the 
United States, moreover, give Canada a piece of Maine 
through which to make a road from Halifax to Que- 
bec ; that it renounce the right to keep armed vessels 
on the Great Lakes, and assure to British subjects the 
right to free navigation of the Mississippi. 

As finally agreed upon, it left the question of terri- 
tory exactly where it had been at the beginning of the 
war, and it failed to mention impressment or the rights 
of neutrals, for which the United States had taken up 
arms. But it carried our point in fact if not in words. 
In the House of Lords it was declared that the Ameri- 
cans had " shown a most astonishing superiority over 




ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

From the painting by John Trumbull, in the Governor's Room 
City Hall, New York 



AN AMAZING WAR 105 

the British during the whole of the conference," and 
in Canada it was predicted that such a disgraceful 
peace could not last. " Torrents of blood must flow " 
on both sides, the Montreal " Herald " declared, be- 
fore a real peace could be obtained. 

Despite the chagrin of those Americans who had 
talked so grandly about invading Canada and dictat- 
ing terms at Halifax, the treaty was welcomed at home 
with suitable and, for the most part, hearty rejoicings. 
One sarcastic newspaper asserted that more citizens of 
Massachusetts were hurt in celebrating peace than had 
been wounded in the whole course of the war. The 
manner in which news of the treaty became public 
shows the speed, — or lack of it, — with which im- 
portant tidings traveled one hundred years ago. 

The British sloop of war Favorite brought Mr. 
Henry Carroll, one of the American secretaries at 
Ghent, to New York with copies of the treaty on 
Saturday, February 11, forty-four days after the sig- 
natures were affixed. He departed next day for 
Washington, which he reached shortly after d^rk on 
the afternoon of Tuesday, February 14. Meantime 
New York had been flooded with hand-bills and illumi- 
nated with candles, and the stock-market had re- 
sponded to the joy sounding through the streets. 
Merchants, anxious to get advance word to their cor- 
respondents in the South, sent off an express ahead 
of Mr. Carroll, and on Monday morning, more than 
twenty-four hours before he and the treaty reached 
Washington, a Connecticut congressman asked the 
city postmaster to oblige him by delaying the de- 
parture of Southern mails for half an hour or so, 
an easy-going practice not uncommon, and always 
granted when asked for by a man of sufficient 
prominence. The postmaster, inconveniently inquisi- 



io6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tive, insisted on knowing why. He was sworn to 
secrecy and told. Then he refused to shoulder the 
responsibility, and the matter was carried to the post- 
master-general. That official declined to act without 
authority of the President. Mr. Madison, shaken 
from his usual air of indifference, declared that he 
would make the news public at once; but all felt 
hampered by the pledge of secrecy already given. 

So Mr. Cole, the President's private secretary, was 
sent to the war office with orders to repeat the news as 
a rumor, vouching for nothing, but leaving each per- 
son to draw his own conclusions. An army officer, 
hearing Mr. Cole, volunteered to mount at once and 
spread the story broadcast as far as his horse could 
carry him. Meanwhile the congressman, having been 
balked of his mails, sent off a private messenger, and 
these two, army officer and messenger, galloped in an 
exciting fifty-mile race to Fredericksburg, from which 
point an obliging innkeeper forwarded the officer's 
message. But it was all energy thrown away, since the 
British squadron off Amelia Island had notified Savan- 
nah on the very day that Mr. Carroll landed, and the 
South had the news even before he left New York. 

By noon of Monday the rumor, released by the 
President's order, was flying about Washington. Men 
flocked into the streets asking if it could be believed. 
At dusk the editor of the " National Intelligencer," the 
one paper published in the city, waited upon the Presi- 
dent to ask the same question. He found Mr. Madison 
sitting alone in the twilight, apparently unconcerned. 
He showed an affable interest in the rumor and hoped 
it would prove true, but professed to know as little 
as his questioner and had no advice to give except to 
suspend judgment and await events. 

Confirmation thundered down Pennsylvania Ave- 



AN AMAZING WAR 107 

nue the next evening in the coach and four that carried 
Mr. Carroll toward the office of the secretary of state. 
Again the streets filled with people cheering and 
gesticulating as the carriage clattered over the wooden 
bridge that spanned the Tiber. 

That night the doors of the Tayloe house, tempo- 
rary home of the President since the British burned 
the Executive Mansion, stood wide open, and all 
Washington, resident and official, crowded around 
Mrs. Madison, who did the honors while her husband 
and the cabinet, in another room, sat in judgment on 
the treaty. All were in gala attire, ladies in their 
choicest finery, judges in their robes, major-generals 
and aides and foreign ministers in their uniforms. 
Quarrels were forgotten and political animosities 
buried in hearty hand-shakes and general rejoicing. 

In his character of newspaper editor, Mr. Gales 
was summoned from this happy assembly to the room 
where the President conferred with his cabinet. Sub- 
dued joy sat upon the faces of every one of them. 
The President, after kindly stating the result of their 
deliberations, addressed himself to the secretary of 
the treasury in a sportive tone, saying to him : 

" Come, Mr. Dallas, you with your knowledge of 
the contents of the treaty derived from the careful 
perusal of it, and who write with so much ease, 
take the pen and indite for this gentleman a paragraph 
for the paper of to-morrow to announce the reception 
and probable acceptance of the treaty." 

This Mr. Dallas did in terms as stilted as those in 
which the command was given, for in such dignified 
and leisurely fashion was American journalism con- 
ducted in the year of grace 181 5. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE OPENING WEST 

WITH the signing of the Treaty of Ghent His- 
tory blotted the page, turned a leaf, and 
bade the United States begin a new chapter. 
Issues, conditions, and the point of view all changed. 
Europe regarded the United States with vastly in- 
creased respect; but the great achievement of the 
War of 1812 was the transformation it wrought at 
home. The experience of common danger and a com- 
mon pride of victory welded the States together as 
nothing else could have done. It opened wide to them 
the vista of what they were to become, united and 
powerful. 

Up to that time our chief concern, all unconsciously, 
had been our relation to Europe, — what Europe would 
think of us, how we should fare in the making and 
keeping of treaties. With the return of peace, what 
the rest of the world might choose to think suddenly 
became of minor importance, and the country entered 
upon the second phase of its life as a nation, — thirty 
years or more devoted to the contemplation and eulogy 
of its own greatness, — giving the rest of the universe 
only such time as it could spare from this engrossing 
occupation. It was the hobbledehoy, boy-who-can- 
do-without-any-help stage, doubtless necessary to de- 
velopment, but unattractive, and most provoking to 
European onlookers. 

In this second period political domination passed 

108 



THE OPENING WEST 109 

from Virginia and New England to the cotton-grow- 
ing regions of the South and the new States of the Mis- 
sissippi valley. Cotton assumed immense importance 
in industry and in politics, and the region beyond the 
Alleghanies, which had been a disturbing possibility 
to Federalists of the old school, became a vital and 
vocal fact in Congress and in commerce. 
( The land-hunger that has played so large a part 
in changing the face of the American continent appears 
to be ours by inheritance, a legacy through a long line 
of Goth and savage ancestors from some remote, 
naked colossus, who wielded his club in obedience to 
primal instinct. It seems stronger than volition, 
stronger far than reason. Parties and men who have 
honestly tried to oppose it have gone down to defeat. 
Parties and men who have dishonestly urged it on 
have flourished for a time at least, and the country has 
profited by their acts. Manifest destiny is an arro- 
gant phrase, sadly overworked ; yet history seems to 
whisper that there may be something in it. The early 
explorers annexed in the name of their sovereigns all 
the land that they sighted and all about which they 
were told. The colonists coming after them took all 
they needed at the moment from the Indians, and with 
the growth of new settlements claimed ever-widening 
western horizons. ^^ 

At the end of the Revolution the Federalists, dis- 
mayed at the size of the Government, limited their 
desires strictly to what lay near at hand, voicing the 
sentiments of the humble-minded farmer : " I ain't 
graspin'. I only want the farm that j'ines on to 
mine." But even the Federalists admitted that sooner 
or later the land that " j'ined " would have to be taken 
in, — admitted it sorrowfully or with resignation or 
secret elation, according to their natures. 



no OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Upon the Western map Hamilton read balance- 
sheets written close with figures of the country's pros- 
perity. Jay, it will be remembered, saw in his mind's 
eye, and tried to make Congress see, " delightful villas, 
gilded spires, and spacious cities rising." Gouverneur 
Morris, turning resolutely away from the beguiling 
mirage, strove to regard the Western region in the 
cold light of fact. He wrote : 

As to the navigation of the Mississippi, everybody knows 
that the rapidity of the current will forever prevent ships from 
sailing up, however easily they may float down. Now, unless 
some new dragon shall be found whose teeth, sown on the 
banks of the Ohio, will produce seamen, I know not where 
else they will be obtained to navigate ships abroad, which 
can never return home. 

He felt obliged, therefore, to favor admitting Spain's 
claim, and advised giving up the mouth of the river. 
Which goes to show that that far-ofif primitive an- 
cestor, land-hungry without knowing it, wielded his 
club in rhythm to a higher law than mere reason. 

Jefferson, unhampered by Federalism, let his mind 
run riot over the map. He saw the empty spaces filled 
with population, and, dividing them into States, gave 
them names mostly of his own devising: Sylvania, 
Saratoga, Cherronesus, Assenisipi, Metropotamia, 
Michigania, Illinoia, Polypotamia, Pelisipia, and Wash- 
ington; monstrosities like lumbering centaurs, half- 
buffalo, half -Mercury, the very look of which inspires 
gratitude that the map he really saw was so nearly 
blank. 

Even before the Revolution the region between the 
Alleghanies and the Mississippi had been well blocked 
out. Posts, founded by early French explorers at 
dates remote enough to be respectably ancient accord- 



THE OPENING WEST in 

ing to European standards, nourished themselves upon 
our wild beasts, and endured as centers of the fur 
trade. At St. Louis, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes, 
French accents could be heard, mingling with Indian 
gutturals and the drawl of pioneer speech, and in such 
places unexpected elegancies of life were to be found 
side by side with the rudest of frontier customs. 

Who had been first among white settlers of the 
Atlantic coast to cross the mountains, or when or 
where they crossed, no one knows. Little by little the 
American sequence of trapper, pioneer, surveyor and 
husbandman pushed westward, drawing its alien civili- 
zation with it. One after another names of new settle- 
ments appeared upon the map. Among the earliest 
was Cumberland, given in a fit of nostalgia by Dr. 
Thomas Walker, forerunner of Boone, to the noble 
stream and mountains that reminded him of England 
across the sea. Another was the Watauga Common- 
wealth, where John Sevier, as President of the " State 
of Franklin " lived in primitive luxury a republican 
king, dispensing justice and dealing out mercy accord- 
ing to his own sense of right. This was the state so 
far away in the wilderness that eighteen months elapsed 
before Franklin heard of his Western namesake, and 
sent embarrassed thanks, supposing it had really been 
called Frankland, and regretting he was unable to ac- 
knowledge the honor more substantially than by good 
wishes. There were the Holston settlements which 
were to endure and become Kentucky; the ill-starred 
Moravian community, wiped out by massacre in 1782; 
and year by year an ever-increasing number of lonely 
clearings in the forest where men toiled and hunted and 
defended their homes, and women drudged and bore 
children in ever-present dread of Indian attacks. Even 
before the Revolution so many settlers had come that 



112 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

whole regiments marched from behind the mountains 
to take part in the struggle, and at the close of the war 
hundreds went West where one had gone before. 

The great difficulty of the mountain barrier lay in 
its immense length and width rather than in its height. 
Three hundred miles of ridge upon ridge from east 
to west made hard traveling for the early settlers ; but 
it could be pierced at four separate places. In the 
north the Hudson and Mohawk valleys led to the upper 
Alleghany, and that in turn led to the Mississippi River 
by way of the Ohio. Farther south was the valley of 
the Potomac, which offered a route direct to the upper 
Ohio. Still farther south lay the way through Cum- 
berland Gap, a natural entrance from Virginia and the 
Carolinas. This was a favorite also with Pennsylva- 
nians because of comparative ease in travel, though it 
lengthened their journey many miles. Last of all, the 
Western country might be reached through the strip of 
low land along the gulf coast. Once beyond the moun- 
tains, emigrants had before them the whole great mid- 
dle plateau of the continent, with its varying zones of 
richness, from the tree-clad Alleghanies to the poison- 
ous alkali-beds of the Western desert, from the north, 
packed with undiscovered coal and minerals, to the 
regions of sugar-cane and cotton. Through the center 
of this, dividing the known country from the unknown, 
the Mississippi coiled on its southward way, fruitful 
and predatory by turns. 

The four routes across the mountains were so far 
apart that emigrants started westward along their own 
parallels of latitude, to which they were apt to cling, 
it being easier and more natural to remain in a climate 
to which they were accustomed. As yet the greater 
portion of emigration came from the Southern and the 
central Atlantic States, for it was only with the com- 



THE OPENING WEST 113 

pletion of the Erie Canal in 1825 that New England 
poured its overflow into the upper Ohio and Mississippi 
valleys. 

The southward trend of the Ohio River, chief 
natural highway into the West, swept the few who ven- 
tured from Northern States south as well as west ; and 
the fact that the country to the north of the Ohio, " the 
Indian side," remained for many years in possession 
of the red men, delayed settlement there long after its 
southern bank, as far as its junction with the Missis- 
sippi, was dotted with clearings and towns. 

As the warlike Creek and Choctaw and Cherokee 
Indians of the South were likewise effectually pre- 
venting settlement in their neighborhood, the frontier 
swept northwestward from Cumberland Sound, then 
the extreme southern limit of United States territory, 
toward the Mississippi, which it reached at the point 
where the Ohio flowed into it. White settlement thus, 
even before the War of 1812, had assumed the form 
of a great wedge of invasion that was later to press 
forward, spread out, and possess the land. 

Kentucky, already an old State and a strong one, 
lay at the point of this wedge. It had been the second 
to enter the Union after the Revolution, and when it 
did so in 1792 its population already numbered 100,000. 
It was progressive, too. From the time it had been 
a mere oasis of white settlement in the wilderness it had 
supported institutions " for the teaching of Latin, 
Greek, and the different branches of science." As 
eager for new ideals of political freedom as for these 
old ones of culture, it had forged rapidly ahead to 
prominence in national councils. It owned cotton mills 
and nail factories, dancing-schools and societies for the 
promotion of useful knowledge, long before it was out 
of the pioneer stage. It had even produced a few 



114 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

painters of portrait and landscape. It also developed 
many citizens with an aptitude for politics and a gift 
for oratory, — a new and effective school of states- 
manship of which Henry Clay was the eloquent flower. 

Its rich country was originally a sort of neutral 
zone threaded with Indian trails, a territory where 
none might dwell, but through which all were at liberty 
to move in hunt or war. The shade of its forests was 
so dense, the story of its white settlement so full of 
tragedy, that it was known as the " dark and bloody 
ground." The great character of its pioneer period 
had been Daniel Boone, whose picturesque, half- 
legendary figure stands for all that is typical in that 
vanished phase of our national life. 

Born in Pennsylvania, he had grown to manhood 
on the banks of the Yadkin in North Carolina, had 
built his hut, and married early, after the fashion of 
the locality. But he found tilling the ground dull work 
when the forest called. Expeditions into it to hunt 
game or to make salt at the salt-licks where animals and 
men alike went to satisfy their cravings, only fastened 
its dominion more firmly upon him; and when a wan- 
dering Indian trader strayed across his pathway and 
told him of the rich country to the west called Ken- 
tucky, which in the language of the red men meant 
" at the head of the river," or " Long River," he gave 
himself up to his task with a fervor that was little short 
of fatalism, believing himself " ordained of God to 
settle the wilderness." 

With this Indian trader for guide, he and five others 
left the Yadkin in May, seven years before the out- 
break of the Revolution, and hunted all that summer 
through a country he never tired of extolling; for 
Boone had the eye of a lover for nature's beauties 
and no little eloquence in describing them. When win- 



THE OPENING WEST 115 

ter came he and one of his companions were cap- 
tured by Indians. Making their escape, they searched 
long and unavailingly for the rest of their party. In- 
stead, that marvelous coincidence only found in the 
drama and the dealings of Providence led them through 
unnumbered miles of wilderness straight into the arms 
of two other white men, one of whom proved to be 
Boone's younger brother, who had started out to fol- 
low him. Their companions were soon waylaid and 
killed, but the two Boones spent a long winter un- 
molested in the forest. By spring their ammunition 
had run low, and the younger brother went back to the 
settlements for a new supply, leaving Daniel alone in 
the woods " without bread, salt, or sugar, without 
company of my fellow-creatures, or even a horse or 
dog " for three long months. He exercised great 
caution, hiding his camp and sleeping in the cane-brake 
if the signs were not to his liking, but he was absolutely 
without fear, " which," as he sagely wrote in his 
memoirs, " is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, 
only augments the pain." 

After the safe return of his brother they hunted a 
year longer, and then made their way back to their 
homes. In 1773 he started westward again with a 
party that met disaster at Cumberland Gap. His eld- 
est son and a number of others were killed by the In- 
dians, and the rest, dismayed, retreated to safer regions. 
Soon after this he was called upon by the Governor of 
Virginia to guide a party of surveyors through Ken- 
tucky, his rude, but practical knowledge of com- 
pass and chain being an added qualification. Later he 
was given command of three garrisons in the new 
region, and after that the history of the State is for 
some years the history of his own personal prowess. 
A month before the beginning of the Revolution he 



ii6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

was opening up the " Wilderness Road " from Virginia 
to Kentucky. Afterward he made his mark in the 
legislature of the infant State, as he had already done 
in its forests. 

It is sad and also characteristic that as the country 
filled up and pioneer virtues were supplanted by subtler 
arts of peace, Boone, who had done more for Kentucky 
than any other man, found that the land upon which 
he had settled, and which he thought his own, had 
been wrested from him by trickery. Once again he 
emigrated, this time across the Mississippi into what 
is now Missouri, but was then still the Spanish colony 
of Louisiana. Here he accepted a commission from 
Spain, and here Lewis and Clark, on their way west in 
1804, found him with his married children settled 
around him. 

In all the arts of woodcraft and those strange super- 
senses by which men so gifted find their way unerringly 
without trail or guide he was wonderfully endowed. 
He had a serviceable knowledge of medicine as well as 
of surveying, and a " way " with men white and red. 
" He was my father, my physician, and my friend. 
He tended me as his child, cured my wounds by the use 
of medicine from the woods," wrote one of his road 
party. 

His influence with the Indians was a mystery even to 
himself. In the course of his strange career he killed 
dozens of them with his own hand, but he did it with- 
out rancor and without incurring their enmity. Even 
the murder of his eldest son, the loss of other relatives, 
and the capture of his own daughter by the savages, 
failed to move him from his attitude of impartial, im- 
personal justice. Three separate times the Indians 
made him prisoner, but they never harmed him. Once 
they carried him in triumph to Detroit and exhibited 



THE OPENING WEST 117 

him as a trophy to the Long Knives of King George, 
but they could not be induced to give him up. 

He carried on the game of life and death inspired 
by certain notions of chivalry even toward animals. 
Mighty hunter that he was, and he " hunted steadily " 
" when not on other duty," one of the bills he advo- 
cated in the legislature was for the protection of game. 
Deer and their like he killed only when hunger or need 
of their skins for clothing drove him to it, but he 
warred relentlessly upon beasts of prey, as he did upon 
hostile savages, as enemies of the whites who were 
flocking into the new region. 

He and his class were followed by the husbandmen 
who took up the lands pioneer and surveyor opened to 
them. Such lands were abundant and cheap. Hamil- 
ton's early scheme for making the Northwest Territory 
banker and pledge for the young nation had undergone 
some changes. Hamilton had reserved certain tracts 
for subscribers to the national loan, and placed the 
rest upon the market to be sold in lots of a hundred 
acres to actual settlers, or in townships ten miles square 
to capitalists, at a price of thirty cents an acre. He 
originally suggested twenty cents, but a virtuous Con- 
gress demanded more. Small purchasers were re- 
quired to pay cash, the others to finish payment in two 
years. But under these conditions there were few 
small purchasers. Even the poorest had confidence 
enough and enough of the gambling spirit to try to buy 
in larger quantities. So in 1800 the price was changed 
to two dollars an acre, and again in 1820 it was changed 
to one dollar and thirty-five cents, without credit. 
But even at two dollars an acre a man was shiftless in- 
deed who could not hope to own a family estate. 

Though not necessarily better Americans, these peo- 
ple west of the mountains were more distinctively 



ii8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

American than those to the east. Long after pioneer 
days were over their closeness to pioneer conditions in- 
fluenced their point of view. They built schools and 
called them colleges before their fields were fenced, just 
as the colonists on the coast had done ; but the old feudal 
distinctions of caste and privilege that had successfully 
crossed the Atlantic a century before, and still persisted 
in older communities, had been unable to gain a foot- 
hold beyond the mountains. Accidents of birth or of 
wealth no longer set a man apart from his fellows. 
In subduing the wilderness it had been found that a 
horn of powder counted for more than an ancestral 
sword. 

Europe, with its arbitrary standards, its politics dyed 
in oppression, its wonders of architecture, and all its 
luxury of worldly gear, seemed very far away. Hav- 
ing demonstrated to their own satisfaction that they 
could create new homes and keep bright the ideal of 
liberty, these Westerners were in danger of forgetting 
their country's place and obligations in the family of 
nations. England was not to them the mother coun- 
try, but the country they had successfully fought 
and whipped. The Spaniards on the border to the 
south and west were a subtler, though less immediately 
sinister, menace than the Indians. France was not the 
country that had sent us Lafayette, but a nation of 
maniacs flying at one another's throats. 

Settlers from the North and settlers from the South 
carried with them their own sectional ways and prej- 
udices, which circumstances gradually modified; but 
there was one point upon which they united as one man 
against the people of the East. That was the future 
greatness and present needs of this new region. They 
charged the East with inability or lack of will to pro- 
tect them from Indian raids and the harassments of 



THE OPENING WEST 119 

Canadian and Spanish allies of the red men; and when 
specially incensed they indulged in threats of following 
their own destiny, of breaking away from the indiffer- 
ent older States, and forming a confederation of their 
own in the Mississippi valley, ignoring the fact that 
even if all they charged was true, they would be no 
better able to cope with Canadians, Indians, and Span- 
iards after secession than before. 

The successful outcome of the War of 181 2 silenced 
these threats, if it did not effectually remove the 
distrust between the regions. Then followed years 
when conditions on both sides of the Atlantic literally 
pushed people into our Western country. A great 
growth in manufactures at the end of the war largely 
changed industrial conditions in America. In 1800 
nineteen twentieths of the population had lived upon 
farms. Even yet the raising of food-stuffs was the 
great national industry, but the change to manufactures 
was too rapid not to cause hardship. It became diffi- 
cult to find employment either in town or country, and 
hard to sell the produce grown upon Eastern farms. 
The roads leading westward filled with processions of 
men and beasts and goods, the well-to-do traveling with 
their flocks and herds in caravans numbering from two 
wagons to fifty, the poorer in little household groups, 
sometimes grotesque and sometimes pathetic, the man 
pushing the scanty household belongings in a cart or 
even carrying them on his back, while his wife and 
babies trudged beside him. Thus the Western proces- 
sion moved forward, impelled in part by enthusiasm, 
in part by want. Capitalists went upon an impulse 
of business expansion that opened new roads and new 
industries in reckless disregard of momentary needs 
and resources. As for those dependent upon their two 
hands, who had no plant to sacrifice and little to lose 



120 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

in any event, it was but natural they should betake 
themselves westward in the hope of bettering their 
fortunes. 

There was still another element in the great move- 
ment. New types of faces were now to be seen. 
After Napoleon's downfall the breaking up of Con- 
tinental armies released thousands who hurried away 
from battle-scarred Europe to try their fortunes in a 
new world. For the most part they were wage-earn- 
ers, in need of instant employment. Coming at a time 
when the United States was itself in the throes of 
business depression and recovery from war, they com- 
plicated not a little the industrial situation in the East, 
and numbers of them joined the westward procession. 

But the presence of these Europeans did not lessen 
the aggressive Americanism of the West. The French 
Revolution and Napoleon's meteoric career had left as 
residuum not so much the fruit of victory as horror 
at their excesses. Anarchy had staggered back into 
respect for order. Fear of one man's imperious will 
had driven bickering nations into the semblance of con- 
cord out of which present-day Europe was to emerge. 
Battle, murder, and sudden death had sent emigrants 
flocking to this country, but they all accepted as fore- 
gone conclusions the principles for which the soldiers 
of our Revolutionary armies had died. The older im- 
migrants might sigh in secret for Europe, but it was 
for a long-past, golden vision of their youth, not for 
the recent misery from which they had fled. The 
younger ones knew only the misery, and as they became 
used to the New World and its ways, they were well 
satisfied with a country where there was no conscrip- 
tion, where the industrious had a chance to rise, where 
even in times of want there was usually enough to eat. 

They wrote to their relatives left behind, these 



THE OPENING WEST 121 

came, too, and the westward stream of emigration, 
both foreign and domestic, grew in volume every year. 
After the completion of the Erie Canal opened an 
easy water-route from the north, travelers went both 
up and down the Mississippi Valley. " More than half 
the whole number of emigrants now arrive in the 
West by water," was the statement made in 1832. 
" The remark applies to nine tenths of those that come 
from Europe and the Northern cities." Germans ar- 
rived in substantial numbers in 1820. In 1833 came 
many thousand more to settle in Cincinnati, change 
St. Louis from its early French aspect, and lay the 
foundations of broad and solid industry throughout 
the Middle West. 

There was still unlimited land. The sequence of 
hunter, pioneer, surveyor, and husbandmen pushed on. 
The great wedge of invasion that had broadened and 
flattened and pressed hard against the Mississippi, 
crossed it and took its way over the plains. Trains of 
white-covered emigrant wagons, streaming in broken 
lines by day, at night formed circles, with the women 
and flocks inside, to make improvised fortresses against 
the Indians. And before the rich prairie lands of 
Kansas and " loway " were well settled, while broad 
reaches of arable land and an unknown desert yet 
stretched to the west, discovery of gold on the Pacific 
coast sent many more thousands on a new venture 
across the continent. 

Meantime the East as well as the West was experi- 
encing changes. Wide differences of custom re- 
mained. Slavery and a genial climate had, in our 
southern Atlantic States, grafted care-free prodigality 
upon feudal English notions. New York was still 
strongly Dutch. New England was Puritan to the 
backbone. Even their holidays were different. On 



122 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

New Year's day visiting and the exchange of greetings 
possessed the inhabitants of Manhattan Hke a frenzy. 
Ladies in their best frocks and the clergy in their vest- 
ments received in state, while men of all grades of so- 
ciety hurried from house to house, intent on covering 
the whole list of their acquaintances, lest a failure to call 
might be taken amiss. Confectioners advertised giant 
seed-cakes weighing as much as fifteen hundred pounds 
baked for the festival season, and people thronged to 
see the huge loaves before they were cut up. 

In the South, Christmas was the season of feasting 
and rejoicing both in the " great house " and the slave 
quarters. 

Farther north, " Deeds, not words " was the motto 
of the New-Englanders, who chose to be ungracious in 
both. They frowned upon Christmas as popish and 
expressions of good will at the beginning of the year as 
a waste of breath. Thanksgiving was their day for 
what to other temperaments would have been jollity. 
Reunited families gathered " in their usual places of 
worship," and after the lengthy duty of thanking the 
Lord was over, went home to eat an inexpressibly 
hearty dinner and to conceal more or less successfully 
covert criticism or approval of " in laws " and blood 
relations. 

While such diversities remained, dawning national 
consciousness rapidly drew the different regions to- 
gether in self-satisfied glorification. There was one 
holiday in which all parts of the country, even repressed 
New England, joined with abandon. This was Fourth 
of July, with its speechmaking and its noise of cannon 
and hurrahing. ** The whole atmosphere was filled 
with Independence " in a sort of inspiring, national in- 
toxication. The one sentiment in which all united re- 
gardless of region or religion or politics was the con- 



THE OPENING WEST 123 

viction that the United States had the best form of gov- 
ernment upon earth and that American society was 
more moral, and therefore more highly desirable, than 
anything to be found in the effete monarchies of Eu- 
rope. De Tocqueville wrote : 

Nothing is more embarrassing in the ordinary intercourse 
of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A 
stranger may be very well inclined to praise many of the 
institutions of their country, but he begs permission to blame 
some of the peculiarities which he observes, — a permission 
which is, however, inexorably refused. America is therefore 
a free country in which, lest anybody should be hurt by your 
remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private indi- 
viduals or of the State, of the citizens or of the authorities, 
of public or of private undertakings, or, in short, of any- 
thing at all except it be of the climate and the soil ; and 
even then Americans will be found ready to defend either 
the one or the other. 

The national self-esteem even rose to a pitch where 
it could tolerate with good humor certain affectations 
in foreigners, though for itself it would have none of 
them. A British minister who reached New York on 
his way to Washington during this era of self-esteem 
drove through the streets with two footmen in livery 
upon his carriage. New York looked on more amused 
than impressed, and the gamins finally voiced public 
sentiment in the cry : " Hurrah for the Englishmen ! 
Hurrah for the Englishmen ! It takes two Englishmen 
to make one nigger ! " 



CHAPTER VII 

ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 

AT the close of the War of i8 12 the old Federal 
party died. For some time before this there 
had not been the wide difference between Fed- 
erals and Republicans that distinguished them in earlier 
years. As Calhoun once put it, " When the Repub- 
licans, headed by Mr. Jefferson, stormed and carried 
the citadel of government in 1801, they were not such 
fools as to spike the guns." Once in office they had 
been forced to adopt certain Federal practices even 
while proclaiming Republican theories. Federal rep- 
resentation in Congress steadily decreased, and opposi- 
tion to the war finally killed it. It is almost impossible 
for a party to oppose a war in which the country is ac- 
tively engaged and still live. 

It is said that when the number of Federals in Con- 
gress dwindled to eleven a conference was called to 
decide whether it were worth while to continue their 
futile opposition. It was not a cheerful meeting, but 
one of them still had spirit enough for an army. 
" Friends," he cried, springing to his feet and beam- 
ing upon the little company with a persuasive energy 
that brought answering light to the faces of all who 
heard him, " just remember that we are as many as the 
apostles were after Judas deserted them. Think what 
they did, and fight it out ! " 

But even such spirit could not stand against facts. 

124 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 125 

In their stronghold of New England the Federals ral- 
lied, and late in December, 18 14, called together the 
Hartford Convention to consider ways of ending their 
unwilling connection with the war. They even pro- 
posed to withdraw from the Union if it could not be 
managed otherwise. Commissioners were sent to Con- 
gress with a respectful petition, but they reached Wash- 
ington just in time to witness Henry Carroll's triumph- 
ant entry with the treaty of peace, and quietly faded 
away in the general rejoicing. One witty journal 
issued an advertisement, "Lost: Two gentlemen of 
Boston," etc. 

The country had had its fill of strife, and the old 
issues being gone, there were new ones on which all 
could unite. The first task was to draw the nation 
out of the financial depths into which it had sunk. 
The Bank of the United States, organized through 
Hamilton's eloquence and genius, legally expired in 
181 1 when war with England was about to begin. 
How the Government got money for its expenses is 
an unexplained mystery. 

Long before peace was signed both gold and silver 
had vanished from circulation. Notes issued by local 
banks overspread the land, growing less valuable with 
every mile they traveled. The Government had issued 
treasury notes, — not money, only promises of the 
Federal Government to pay local banks for their poor 
paper, — in such quantities that army officers setting 
out from Washington with a supply of these to pay 
the troops found that the value of every third dollar 
had entirely disappeared by the time they reached the 
Northern frontier. Small change took the form of 
" cut money," either actual silver dollars chopped into 
halves and quarters and eighths, or " shinplasters," 
which were merely scraps of paper decorated with 



126 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

coarse woodcuts of such precious fragments. Both 
forms invited dishonesty, for coins could be, and often 
were, fraudulently divided into fifths and ninths, and 
woodcuts were obviously easy to reproduce. 

In the two remaining years of Madison's term Con- 
gress chartered a new National Bank, for a period of 
twenty years, like the first one, and passed laws to pro- 
tect manufactures that had sprung up when war and 
the Embargo cut off all possibility of importing from 
abroad. These had grown rapidly, but with the re- 
turn of peace, English manufacturers rushed their 
goods to America to compete for their old trade. 

To shut them out. Congress placed a prohibitive duty 
on such foreign articles and grades of cloth as could be 
made at home, a lower tax on those that could be partly 
supplied by American factories, and a tariff for revenue 
upon articles largely consumed in this country, but 
made abroad. This raised a clamor of protest from 
the regions injured, and a clamor of support from 
those aided by the new law. The shipping interests of 
New England complained bitterly. The South, which 
raised cotton and used much coarse cloth for its slaves, 
approved. 

The new tariff proved an immediate stimulus to 
industry. In a short time the mills of New England 
were making all the cotton goods needed, and the de- 
lighted country entered upon an orgy of business ex- 
pansion, of speculation, and of internal 'improvement 
which speedily overshot the mark and brought about 
the " hard times of eighteen hundred and starve to 
death," when America experienced the first taste of 
bitter fruit that was to follow. 

Reasoning that the tariff of 1816 had been a good 
thing. Congress attempted to find the remedy for these 
hard times by imposing higher duties in 1818 and again 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 127 

in 1824, though the measures of the latter year passed 
by only narrow majorities, as against the almost unani- 
mous vote of 1818. 

Madison, meanwhile, had been succeeded in 181 7 by 
James Monroe, upon whom the choice settled by com- 
mon consent, the Young Republicans favoring him be- 
cause of the zeal he had shown in the war, while the 
conservative element accepted him because he reached 
the Presidency in the usual way, from the position of 
secretary of state, as the culmination of long and credit- 
able public service. 

The " last of our Revolutionary stock of Presidents " 
is a shining example of what ordinary talents may at- 
tain when united to great industry and high purpose. 
He had entered the American army at its very forma- 
tion, when only seventeen, and had literally taken part 
in the making of his country's history from the begin- 
ning; but only once in all that time had he shown 
exceptionally brilliant qualities. That was in his 
prompt willingness to assume responsibility at the time 
of the Louisiana Purchase. Whatever the device upon 
his coat of arms may have been, — if he possessed one, 
— it should have read, "If at first you don't succeed, 
try, try again." Three separate times he lost political 
favor and dropped from a lofty place to the very bot- 
tom of the political ladder, but each time he entered 
the Virginia general assembly and from there rose to 
greater heights than before. 

It has been said that Monroe " lacked genius, but 
possessed judgment." It would be hard to find a 
shorter or truer summary. He was wise enough to 
profit by experience, as few do, and he grew with his 
opportunities. With the exception of those who op- 
posed him on the ground that all the Presidents save 
one had come from the same State, his fellow-citizens 



128 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

seemed to feel that he would make a safe President, and 
at the end of four years were sufficiently of the same 
opinion to elect him for a second term. 

Jefferson, an onlooker now, took almost as deep an 
interest in Monroe's career as he had in Madison's. 
He was frankly delighted at his election and still more 
delighted when he heard that John Quincy Adams was 
to be Monroe's secretary of state. The two men were 
made for each other, Jefferson declared. Monroe 
could be trusted to furnish sound judgment for both, 
while Adams wielded a pointed pen. Monroe was so 
thoroughly honest that, if his soul were to be turned 
inside out, not a blot could be found upon it. As for 
the new secretary of state, Jefferson somewhat spite- 
fully added, give* Adams a conclusion, and he could be 
relied upon to adduce the best of reasons in support of 
it. 

There were few appointments to be made, most of 
the offices being already filled by the party in power, 
which was perhaps fortunate for Monroe's popularity. 
In the matter of appointments a bit of unsought ad- 
vice came to him that took on amusing significance in 
the light of after events. This was a letter from An- 
drew Jackson, begging him " to exterminate that mon- 
ster called party spirit," and give the best men the of- 
fices, regardless of party, so that even the Federals 
might be drawn into the " great and united Republican 
brotherhood." 

The great and united Republican brotherhood seemed 
an actual fact during the first years of Monroe's 
Presidency. The country was so agreeably busy in 
reorganizing its plans and its resources and its ideas 
that there was no time for quarreling. His second 
election was almost unanimous ; but even at that mo- 
ment the much vaunted Era of Good Feeling was on 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 129 

the wane, and four years more sufficed to bring about 
partizan wrangles that again threw the Presidential 
election into the House of Representatives. 

Five issues of Monroe's administration were im- 
portant enough to color national history for all time. 
It is significant of the new America that only one of 
these issues had to do with Europe except in a sec- 
ondary way, and that this was the most distinctively 
and aggressively American of them all. 

It was during his term of office that the protective 
tariff ceased to be an experiment and became a party 
creed, discussion merging into contention as to 
whether the tariff ought to be applied for the purpose 
of protecting American manufactures or solely for the 
purpose of raising revenue. 

Under his Presidency the system of internal im- 
provements, — the building of roads and opening of 
waterways necessary to the country's development, — 
was pushed to such extremes that it became fatal to 
the national finances. 

During his administration the slavery question, al- 
ready a disturbing element in national politics, though 
still regarded as a matter of policy more than of morals, 
reached the point of heated discussion and was lulled 
again into comparative quiet for forty years by Clay's 
ingenious plan of the Missouri Compromise. 

It was during Monroe's administration that destiny 
for the country, — and for Andrew Jackson, — ad- 
vanced a long and fateful step by way of Florida. 

Most novel of all, it was during this administration 
that the United States had to decide what attitude it 
would take toward the fledgling independent states of 
South America. 

This was a thrilling point, for it marked how far 
the country had traveled beyond its colonial status. 



I30 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

In its turn it was called upon to pass judgment on 
rebellious colonies. 

It was in Monroe's message to Congress of Decem- 
ber 2, 1823, that he announced the doctrine of America 
for Americans. How far credit for this belongs to the 
President, how much of it was in the air, it is fruitless 
to inquire. Responsibility for particular historic acts 
attaches itself like a bur to the first convenient object 
and sticks. Jefferson has popular credit for the pur- 
chase of Louisiana, yet important shares in the credit 
belong to Napoleon Bonaparte and James Monroe, who 
are rarely mentioned in connection with it. In the 
formulation of the Monroe Doctrine it is quite likely 
that John Quincy Adams, who held the pointed pen 
and the office of secretary of state, had some part. The 
idea was not a new one. In 1808, fifteen years be- 
fore the events that called out Monroe's statement, 
Jefferson, referring to these same Spanish colonies, 
wrote in a letter to the governor of Louisiana, " We 
consider their interests and ours as the same, and that 
the object of both must be to exclude all European in- 
fluence from this hemisphere." 

History had been making since 1808. Our success 
in war with England and the reestablishment of a re- 
public in France had, as Captain Mahan says, " roused 
Spain's indolent, but passionate colonies " to announce 
their freedom. But Europe, having just safely in- 
terred the bugaboo of Napoleonic domination, had no 
mind to exchange it for a plague of republics in either 
hemisphere. Austria, Russia, and Prussia formed 
their Holy Alliance, which aimed at nothing less than 
the government of the world, and showed unmistak- 
able signs of interfering to help Spain regain the upper 
hand in South America, and at the same time tighten 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 131 

Russia's grip upon American territory near the Arctic 
Circle. 

It was to this that Monroe replied by declaring 
America to be no longer ground for colonization, and 
that hereafter Europe could not become possessed of 
American soil either by purchase or war. Fortu- 
nately for the Monroe Doctrine, it happened that Eng- 
land just then was as eager as the United States 
to prevent such interference, though from totally 
different reasons. She proposed an alliance with the 
United States to offset the Holy Alliance, which Adams 
politely declined, replying that every purpose would be 
gained if England recognized the South American re- 
publics. One can imagine even the precise and serious 
Adams, as he penned the message, chuckling a little 
over the change a few years had brought about. 

From the very nature of the case this great friendli- 
ness on the part of England could not last. Her in- 
terests and ours were too far apart ; but at the moment 
the spectacle of the two countries standing shoulder 
to shoulder sufficed to turn away threatened interfer- 
ence. Owing to more pressing matters, England de- 
layed recognition of the Spanish republics for two 
years, and when at last she did act, Canning, the 
British prime minister, explained in swelling words, 
" I called the New World into being to redress the bal- 
ance of the Old," a boast at variance with the idea 
Monroe and Adams had in mind, but one which they 
could afford to pass over in amused silence. 

Before long England was calling the position of the 
United States " extravagant," but the Monroe Doctrine 
was an established policy; and although it has never 
been written into American law or had the full sanction 
of Congress, from that day to this it has been a guid- 



132 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ing national principle, cited perhaps more often than 
any other in American diplomacy. In consequence 
Monroe's name has never ceased to be upon the lips of 
his countrymen, though his personality is probably less 
vivid in their minds than that of any of his predeces- 
sors. 

The new and aggressive American spirit showed a 
distinct trend toward democratic ways of doing things. 
One evidence of it was the growing sentiment against 
having candidates for President nominated by a con- 
gressional caucus, as had been the custom since Jeffer- 
son's day. States had been giving the right of suf- 
frage to more and more of their people, and all wanted 
a hand in President-making. Monroe's second elec- 
tion had been almost unanimous ; it was agreed that he 
was to be the candidate ; how the nomination was made 
did not much matter. The campaign of 1824, on the 
contrary, has been aptly called a scrub race for the 
Presidency. There were five principal aspirants, be- 
sides others locally popular, but dropped upon evidence 
that they had no large following. With the exception 
of William H. Crawford, who was nominated in the 
old way by congressional caucus, all these became can- 
didates by acclaim, so to speak. It at least showed 
wide-spread interest and a belief that there was an 
ample supply of Presidential timber. 

One of the visitors from across the sea, — who, by 
the way, were becoming frequent, — noted our national 
preference for numbers rather than for quality in 
political life: 

"The Americans themselves generally, admit that 
their system is adverse to the formation of men of 
commanding talents. But they always add that in the 
present state of affairs they do better without what we 
call leading men. * When, however, moments of 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 133 

danger and difficulty shall arrive,' say they, ' the general 
intelligence which is spread over our country will in- 
sure us leaders enough for all possible exigencies of the 
State.' " Such reasoning, of course, struck a good 
Englishman as absurd. 

Of the five chief candidates to succeed Monroe as 
President, three were members of his cabinet, which 
speaks volumes for the caliber of the men he chose as 
his advisers. The first was John Quincy Adams, sec- 
retary of state. The second was William H. Craw- 
ford, secretary of the treasury, a man of showy parts 
and good luck, who passed at the time as great. The 
third was John C. Calhoun, one of that famous trium- 
virate of intellect and oratory that ruled the country 
from Congress for many years, but never reached the 
Presidential chair. Henry Clay, speaker of the House 
of Representatives, another member of this trio of con- 
gressional giants, was the fourth candidate. The fifth 
was Andrew Jackson, whose rugged personality gained 
a stronger hold upon the people every day. 

This was the first campaign in which the West exer- 
cised marked influence. Two of the candidates, Jack- 
son and Clay, came from this region. Calhoun and 
Crawford were from the extreme South. Adams was 
from New England. There being at bottom little dif- 
ference in the principles advocated by the five, cam- 
paign oratory had to depend mainly upon personali- 
ties. " It seems as if every liar and calumniator in the 
country was at work day and night to destroy my 
character," Adams wrote. " It is impossible to be 
wholly insensible to this process while it is in opera- 
tion. It distracts my attention from public business 
and consumes precious time." 

Crawford was charged with being corrupt; Jackson 
was denounced as a murderer, Clay as a gambler. 



134 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Clay's partizans in Ohio met and resolved that all the 
candidates were honorable men, and that his friends, 
at least, would " not indulge in the unworthy prac- 
tice " of vilifying them, A rumor that Clay was about 
to retire called forth an answer in winged words that 
Clay " would not be withdrawn from the contest ex- 
cept by the fiat of his Maker," and the campaign pro- 
gressed at a lively pace with meetings, campaign clubs, 
pamphlets, rallies, rhymes, and invective. Before its 
end Crawford was stricken with paralysis. His 
friends and family strove to conceal the nature of his 
malady, but succeeded only in adding a touch of futil- 
ity and pathos to the struggle. Calhoun was believed 
to stand little chance of being elected President, but 
almost everybody favored him for Vice-President. 
He was therefore considered and voted for only for 
that office. Thus the South was eliminated from the 
contest for first place, which narrowed down to a very 
personal trial of strength between Adams, Clay, and 
Jackson, West and East each offering a candidate 
of virtually the same views, while Jackson, who re- 
lied more upon the strength of his military record 
than upon theories of government, opposed them 
both. 

At that time the Tuesday after the first Monday of 
November had not come to be the national day of 
election. The States still voted for Presidential elec- 
tors at their own convenience. The slow mails de- 
layed news, and it was late in December before it was 
definitely known that the vote stood Jackson 99, 
Adams 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37, giving nobody a 
majority, and throwing the election into the House of 
Representatives. The House had to choose between 
the candidates having the three highest votes. This 
eliminated Clay, who frankly wanted to be President. 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 135 

But as speaker of the House he wielded immense in- 
fluence, and might be President-maker, if he could not 
be President. 

He had neither personal nor political confidence in 
Jackson. He told a friend that he could not see in 
the fact that Jackson had killed twenty-five hundred 
Englishmen at New Orleans any proof that he would 
make a good President. Nor had Jackson's actions 
in Florida since the battle of New Orleans furnished 
any such proof. Crawford was incapacitated. There 
seemed, therefore, only one thing for Clay to do, — 
to use his influence for Adams, though Adams was 
far from acceptable to him personally. 

This he did, and Adams was elected. When it be- 
came known that Adams, in turn, purposed to make 
Clay his secretary of state, the partizans of Jackson 
raised a mighty cry of bargain and corruption. Clay 
unwisely replied, thus giving prominence to the charges ; 
and the chorus swelled to a furor of denunciation 
strong enough to defeat Adams for a second term and 
to keep Clay out of the Presidency through a long 
and most popular political lifetime. 

A lively writer has said that " the Adams family 
furnished two Presidents from two successive genera- 
tions, neither fitted to the task." But two more up- 
right and conscientious men never lived. The younger 
Adams was even more thorough and less warmly im- 
pulsive than his father. He was not popular, and it 
seems fitting that the final act of his election should 
have taken place in a chilling storm. The town was 
muffled in heavy snow when the House and Senate 
met to count the electoral vote with all the formality 
and ceremony due the occasion. The House uncov- 
ered in honor of the Senate, for it was still the custom 
for members to wear their hats during ordinary ses- 



136 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

sions. After the counting, the Senate retired, and the 
House cast its ballot and declared Adams elected. 
There was not the least enthusiasm either in the Capi- 
tol or out in the snowy streets. Only the black peo- 
ple cheered a little when they heard the news. 

The new President had been in public service since 
the age of fifteen, when he became secretary to his 
father. Edward Everett said of him that there 
" seemed to be in his life no such state as that of boy- 
hood," and a painfully earnest or unspeakably 
priggish letter written at the tender age of nine bears 
out this uncanny suggestion. His rigid code of 
self-discipline began with distressingly early rising, — 
4 A. M. winter and summer, — and his day extended 
well into the midnight hours, as is attested by the elo- 
quent witness of seventy-five folio volumes of diary, 
dedicated impartially to great events and the minutiae 
of his own and other people's lapses. 

If there was a fearsome amount of " ego in his 
cosmos," there was great ability. He was so con- 
scientious that he appeared surly. For example, he 
would not consent to make a speech in German to the 
farmers of Pennsylvania when he went north to open 
the Erie Canal, because that would be " electioneer- 
ing " ; and when offices fell vacant, he followed Jack- 
gon's advice to Monroe and appointed political enemies, 
if he thought them the better men. It is said that he 
removed only two officials during his entire term, and 
those " for cause." This was pleasing to the limited 
number who drew government salaries, but not to the 
vastly larger number of voters who wished to do so. 
One brave person dared remonstrate. Adams replied 
with blunt stubbornness that he did not intend to make 
removals; whereupon his interlocutor, a witty Irish- 
man, bowed, and remarked that in that case he had 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 137 

no doubt his Excellency would find himself removed 
at the earliest opportunity. 

Adams was a Puritan born out of season, with all 
the virtues and defects of the Puritan temperament. 
He had strong prejudices, but his sense of justice was 
stronger, and when he thought duty demanded it, he 
could waive personal prejudice even to his own politi- 
cal hurt. The suspicion lingers that such sacrifices 
were not without their mitigating pleasure, that the 
greatest satisfaction he got out of life was in running 
counter to his natural impulses. 

He was more generous toward his defeated rivals 
than the most exacting conscience could require. 
However much the wisdom of making Clay his 
secretary of state may be questioned, or Clay's astute- 
ness in accepting the office doubted, the fact that Clay 
threw his influence in favor of Adams's election, and 
that Adams chose Clay for the highest office in his gift, 
shows freedom from personal pettiness on both sides, 
for they had clashed almost continually during their 
joint service at Ghent. Adams freely acknowledged 
Clay's good points. He wrote : 

Clay is an eloquent man, with very popular manners, and 
great political management. He is, like all the eminent men 
of this country, only half educated. His school has been 
the world, and in that he is proficient. His morals, public 
and private, are loose, but he has all the virtues indispensable 
to a popular man. 

He may have thought it well to attach this sort of 
popularity to his administration, feeling that he could 
amply supply erudition and moraj tone. They worked 
well together on the whole, and toward the close of 
his administration Adams offered Clay a place on the 
supreme bench, which the latter, with his eyes upon 
the White House, refused. 



138 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

With his conscientiousness and his obstinacy, Adams 
did not find the Presidency a bed of roses. He man- 
aged to antagonize Congress and popular sentiment in 
the measures that he particularly championed, notably 
a bill for a yet higher tariff. The Twentieth Congress, 
elected after Adams had been President about a year, 
was hostile in both branches, a thing which had 
never occurred during the existence of the Govern- 
ment, Adams dolefully noted. Another administra- 
tion measure that brought forth unexpected opposi- 
tion was an innocent proposal to take part in a conven- 
tion of American republics held at Panama. For this 
Adams reaped the blame, though Clay likewise seems 
to have welcomed the suggestion as likely to promote 
American sentiment and strengthen the Monroe Doc- 
trine. The meeting was to be upon an isthmus. The 
Greek republics had made wonderful history upon an 
isthmus; why should not Americans do the same? 
Europe had made a Holy Alliance against liberty ; 
could not the New World do as much against despotism ? 
Popular imagination failed to catch fire. Perhaps it 
was not sufficiently well read in classical history to 
grasp the comparison; but race prejudice was readily 
inflamed when the opposition called attention to the 
fact that Haiti, a republic of revolted slaves, had been 
asked to take part in the conference. 

This led not only to heated verbal battles, but to 
actual duels, the most notable one being between Clay 
and John Randolph of Roanoke, whose venomous 
tongue hinted at state department forgeries in these 
invitations to Panama, and wove the names of Clay 
and Adams together as a " coalition of Blifil and Black 
George, the combination, unheard of till then, of the 
Puritan and the Black-leg." The fiery Kentuckian 
had lately denounced dueling as a relic of barbarism, 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 139 

but at these words he forgot all about his objection. 
Two shots were exchanged, Clay being in deadly 
earnest, Randolph not intending to do his adversary 
harm. Fortunately Clay's shots went no nearer than 
his opponent's coat. The other emptied his pistol in 
the air, remarking, " I do not fire at you, Mr. Clay," 
and the two shook hands, to the admiration and de- 
light of their seconds. " It was about the last high- 
toned duel that I have witnessed, and among the 
highest-toned that I ever witnessed," wrote Thomas 
H. Benton, regretfully. 

Political abuse grew more violent as time passed. 
Jackson, who meant to be a candidate again, kept his 
forces well in hand. At first the friends of the ad- 
ministration contented themselves with defending their 
party chiefs, but the temptation to retaliate with 
countercharges was too strong, and the campaign of 
1828 became one of the most abusive in our history. 
The old charge of bargain and corruption was revived, 
and did vociferous duty against Adams and his secre- 
tary of state. Clay was denounced as every kind of 
villain, public and private. Adams was held up to 
execration as a monarchist in disguise, a friend of 
duelists, a man of luxurious habits, who even desired 
a billiard-table and chessmen in the White House, and 
of having drawn such vast sums from the public treas- 
ury that the total amounted to sixteen dollars for 
every day of his long life. The tariff was the one 
real issue of the campaign, but all the charges, absurd 
or serious, that could be twisted to fit the purpose were 
used by an enemy trained under Jackson's leadership to 
a degree of subordination that left Burr's adroit manip- 
ulation of Tammany far in the background. 

The partizans of the administration, on their side, 
flung themselves upon every one of the vulnerable 



I40 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

points in Jackson's career, placing the worst construc- 
tion on each; and both sides were guilty of dragging 
the names of women into the contest, 

Adams went down to defeat, but he was a gallant 
loser. A Washington lady, whose diary has already 
been quoted, drew two companion pictures, — one of 
Adams in victory, the other in defeat. The earlier 
tells of a White House " drawing-room " held at the 
time the vote in the House of Representatives made 
Adams President. Mr. and Mrs. Monroe were host 
and hostess, and about them surged a crowd that con- 
tained thieves as well as honest folk, for General 
Scott had his pocket picked of eight hundred dollars 
that night. Adams, Clay, and Jackson were all pres- 
ent, Jackson outshining the successful candidate as a 
center of interest. Ladies climbed chairs and benches 
to get a look at the hero of New Orleans, and Mrs. 
Adams " very gracefully took his arm and made a 
tour of the rooms." Clay, exultant and expansive, 
walked about as well as he could for the crowd, with 
a lady on each arm. Van Rensselaer, the representa- 
tive who cast the deciding vote, was also there, devot- 
ing himself to a beauty and trying to appear unaware 
of the whispered word " treachery " which accompa- 
nied glances in his direction. Adams, despite his 
triumph, had not thawed out of his customary gla- 
cial manner, and " was scarcely more attended than 
usual." He stood in comparative isolation while wits 
made jokes among themselves about their Clay Presi- 
dent. 

Four years later the same lady wrote that the mem- 
bers of the administration were taking Adams's de- 
feat very much to heart, the gentlemen more than the 
ladies ; but that Mr. and Mrs. Adams had gone a little 
too far in an assumed gaiety. 



ONE BORN OUT OF SEASON 141 

At the last drawing-room they laid aside the manners 
which until now they have always worn, and came out in a bril- 
liant masquerade dress of social, gay, frank, cordial manners. 
What a change from the silent repulsive haughty reserve 
[the writer was prodigal of her adjectives] by which they 
have hitherto been distinguished. The great audience cham- 
ber, never before opened, and now not finished, was thrown 
open for dancing, a thing unheard of before at a drawing- 
room! 

This, then, was the first appearance in society of 
the famous East Room of the White House, where 
John Ouincy Adams's mother dried the Presidential 
linen in the tmcomfortable days of her occupancy. In 
the hour of his defeat her son filled it with music. 
Its walls have looked down since upon many historic 
scenes, the bivouac of volunteers, the acclaim of suc- 
cessful generals, weddings, diplomatic gatherings of 
wide significance, and the coffin of America's most 
precious dead, but they have never echoed to more 
unexpected and yet more characteristic sounds. 

In a time of stress the elder Adams sent for a sup- 
ply of arms, gathered his servants about him, and pre- 
pared to defend his home with his life, if necessary. 
The son defended the citadel of his emotions in the 
same way. 

Most men retire from the Presidency to private life. 
The younger Adams had no thought of rest this side 
the grave. He is the only one of our ex-Presidents 
who has subsequently made for himself a successful, 
even a brilliant career. The opposition in both 
branches of Congress to which he ruefully referred, 
and his knowledge that Congress all through his term 
had disliked him and paid as little heed to him as pos- 
sible, appear to have put him on his mettle. Elected 
to the lower House on the wave of anti-Masonic feel- 
ing that swept the country in 1831, he served until 



142 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

mortally stricken in his place on the floor, February 
21, 1848, as he rose to present a handful of petitions. 

As he had not been prominent in either the House 
or the Senate before his Presidency, his friends 
feared that he could not sustain his reputation. But 
he proved himself an adept in the rough and tumble 
of debate, a " free-lance and a hard hitter," who loved 
a fight better than he loved his friends. McCulloch, 
in his " Men and Measures of Half a Century," calls 
him one of the most remarkable men that this country 
had produced, " in no respect more remarkable than 
in the fact that he became a great offhand speaker 
after he left the Presidency and had reached the period 
in life after which there is usually a decline instead of 
improvement in bodily vigor." 

Yet he was never genial, never could escape his 
Puritan concept of evil and sinful humanity. He be- 
lieved that the United States was blessed by nature 
above all other countries, that we had " mingled in 
our cup a portion of enjoyment as large and liberal as 
the indulgence of Heaven has perhaps ever granted 
to the imperfect state of man upon earth," but he 
distrusted the wisdom of his fellow citizens, and 
despaired of the future. The westward movement of 
immigration troubled him. Western ideals and man- 
ners outraged his sense of fitness. He thought that 
this wild and unstable element was destined to overrun 
Texas and Mexico, and that the inevitable outcome 
would be the breaking up of the Union he loved into 
two or three confederacies. 



CHAPER VIII 

A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 

ANDREW JACKSON was sixty-two years old 
when he became President, and " his eye was 
not dim, nor his natural force abated," though 
seven years before, in a fit of disgust and temporary 
ill health, he had retired to his estate to pass the sun- 
set of life in stock-breeding and horse-racing. 

Washington had given him his first office in 179T, 
making him United States district attorney for part of 
the new region southwest of the Ohio. He was a mem- 
ber of the convention that formed a state constitution 
for Tennessee, and represented her in both branches of 
Congress within a few months of her admission to the 
Union. What little impression he made upon his col- 
leagues and upon the staid city of Philadelphia was 
then unfavorable. Jefferson, who was presiding offi- 
cer of the Senate, remembered that he was " so pas- 
sionate he would choke with rage when he attempted 
to speak." 

He had not the judicial temperament, yet in 1798 
he was made judge of the supreme court of Tennessee, 
and held the office successfully for about six years. 
Thus he had more than twenty years of experience, 
legislative and judicial, to his credit before he came 
into his own as warrior. But nature will out, and even 
on the bench his methods were militant. " Though 
unlearned in the law, he knew well how to enforce 

143 



144 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

order," says General Scott, who tells a picturesque 
tale half tradition and half fact of Judge Jackson order- 
ing himself summoned as a posse to subdue an offender 
who proved too much for the sheriff ; descending from 
the bench, personally knocking the culprit into submis- 
sion, placing him before the bar, and then remounting 
to pronounce sentence, proceedings unusual, but emi- 
nently suited to the emergency. 

To keep his own counsel, to move straight toward 
his object, to strike hard, and to care little what prece- 
dents were broken by the blow were his invariable 
rules of action. " The red tape was never made that 
could bind those lean muscular limbs of his," says a 
biographer. He had little opportunity and no desire 
to learn the technic of arms. As President he held 
cabinet counsels in small esteem. He was willing to 
be judge, sheriff, and posse in one, and he would 
doubtless gladly have acted as an overwhelming ma- 
jority in Congress, but not as a unanimous vote, for 
opposition was as the incense of battle to his nostrils. 

His military fame began with the campaign against 
the Creek Indians in 1813, when, in addition to the 
usual hazards of Indian warfare, he faced mutiny 
and starvation among his own troops. He rode along 
the rebellious line, threatening to shoot the first man 
who turned homeward; he himself set the example 
of living upon acorns; and he brought to a victorious 
end an expedition unimportant in itself, but one that 
combined with others to bring about notable results. 

Tecumseh, the moving spirit among the Indians of 
the Northwest, had recently fallen at the battle of the 
Thames, in Canada. His scheme for a federation of 
the tribes perished with him, and this campaign of 
Jackson's broke the power of the Indians in the South- 
west as well, making it possible for military forces to 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 145 

move where they would through territory that the 
Indians had heretofore held against all comers. 

This campaign had also an important bearing on 
the war with England. At the beginning of his ex- 
pedition he informed the secretary of war that he had 
no scruples whatever against crossing the border and 
carrying the flag to Mobile, Pensacola, or St. Augus- 
tine, the excuse for such invasion being that England 
was occupying these places and profiting by the hos- 
pitality of Spain. The administration's cautious an- 
swer, not forbidding this, but pointing out that it was 
necessary first to make sure that Spain willingly al- 
lowed England to occupy her territory, reached Jack- 
son after the war was well over. Meantime he forged 
ahead and did what he saw fit, his success shining 
brighter by contrast wuth the gloom elsewhere. As 
a reward, he was appointed from the volunteer serv- 
ice into the regular army, which he had twice before 
tried to enter. 

Then came his high-handed and brilliant defense of 
New Orleans, carried on very much as he conducted 
his campaign against mutiny and desertion, by force 
of indomitable will and heartening example. He had 
several thousand good men, each one of whom could 
shoot straight and think for himself, but who together 
made up a very badly disciplined army. They were 
of many nationalties and of every complexion under 
the sun. One of the small gunboats in the river was 
manned by New Englanders ; another by a swarthy 
crew drawn from the sailor population of the water- 
front, Portuguese, Norwegians, West Indian Span- 
iards, and French smugglers like the notorious broth- 
ers Lafitte, who in this time of stress scorned British 
overtures and rendered Jackson such service that their 
former misdeeds were pardoned. The local militia 



146 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

was made up of blacks and whites, French and Ameri- 
cans, amon^ them a band of free Negroes. Jackson 
had a few regulars, but they were raw and new to the 
service; his chief hope lay in the Tennessee volun- 
teers, who reached him over nearly impassable roads 
on the very day that the British commander forced his 
way through watery lanes of swamp and bayou into 
the Mississippi River, only a few miles below New 
Orleans. These volunteers were the sort with which 
Jackson had won his victories over the Indians, — 
frontiersmen in leggings and coonskin caps, of un- 
questioned bravery and unerring aim, only a shade less 
determined than Jackson himself. 

In the final encounter the British commander Pak- 
enham had double the numbers at Jackson's disposal, all 
veterans seasoned in Napoleonic wars ; but they were 
too well trained to presume to use the brains the Lord 
had given them. Pakenham mistook the character 
of his opponent, and threw away much of his usual 
caution, so that the two generals met on an equality 
of rashness, if not of numbers. They had also the 
same material out of which to build redouts, Mis- 
sissippi mud, for the tale that Jackson defended New 
Orleans from behind bales of cotton has been relegated 
to fable. At the end of the battle, after barely half 
an hour of fighting, the British works were battered 
to pieces, while those of the Americans came out of 
the ordeal almost uninjured. The British loss was 
twenty-five hundred, including the commanding gen- 
eral; that of the Americans was eight killed and thir- 
teen wounded. Nothing further need be said either 
in eulogy of American marksmanship or British cour- 
age. 

There were picturesque features in the defense, 
apart from the fighting. The tact of the " Tennessee 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 147 

Barbarian " in handling the high-spirited inhabitants 
of New Orleans was equaled only by his success in 
bending them to his will. He pressed rich and poor, 
slave and free, into his service ; proclaimed military 
law, put a stop to all business except the imperative 
one of preparation, and after his victory over the 
British completed his conquest of the people by call- 
ing upon the Abbe Dubourg to hold public services 
of thanksgiving in the cathedral, by allowing him- 
self to be crowned with laurel by the gentle nuns of 
the Ursuline convent, who had prayed for him during 
the battle, and by a personal court scene of dramatic 
intensity. 

During the preparations for defense he had paid 
small heed to civil authority. A judge tried to inter- 
fere when he proclaimed martial law. He ignored the 
writ, ordered the arrest of the judge, and sent him 
beyond the military lines. After civil authority was 
restored, the judge returned the compliment by arrest- 
ing Jackson and fining him a thousand dollars for con- 
tempt of court. By this time Jackson was the idol 
of the city, and the audience in the crowded court 
room seemed on the point of becoming an angry mob. 
Jackson mounted a bench, begged his friends to show 
their regard for him by showing respect for the law, 
paid his fine, and turned to depart ; whereupon the popu- 
lace went quite mad, and, taking the horses from his 
carriage, dragged it to his hotel, shouting all the way. 
Twenty-five years later Congress, with no little ora- 
tory and ceremony, remitted the fine. 

General Scott, whose professional admiration for 
Jackson was tinged by personal dislike, thought him 
all wrong in this struggle with the courts. " For the 
glorious defense of New Orleans, Congress voted 
thanks and a gold medal," he wrote in his autobiogra- 



148 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

phy. " That measure of justice was short at both 
ends. Censure and a monument should have been 
added." 

At the end of the war the army was reduced to a 
peace footing, but Jackson remained in the service, 
and in 1817 another Indian campaign brought him 
before the public in a far from agreeable light. 
Florida still belonged to Spain, and the Seminole In- 
dians had a way of making sudden raids across the 
border into Georgia. The Spanish colony offered 
them a safe place of retreat after an orgy of murder 
and pillage. It was also a refuge for white criminals 
of many nations and kinds, who added their iniquity 
to the forays. The raids became so frequent and dar- 
ing that Jackson was ordered to put an end to them. 
The exact degree of authority given him was later a 
subject of bitter dispute. He claimed that he had dis- 
tinct orders to invade Florida, and that the Govern- 
ment knew and approved his belief that eastern 
Florida should be taken and held as indemnity for out- 
rages upon our citizens. The administration denied 
this. 

Whatever his orders, he did not stop until he had 
taken Pensacola and incidentally executed two English 
men that he found there helping the Indians. This 
raised a storm at home and abroad. Resolutions of 
censure were introduced in both branches of Congress, 
and debated to the exclusion of all other business, in 
one house or the other, for the space of twenty-seven 
days. The House finally voted to sustain him, while 
the Senate laid the resolution on the table. Clay making 
a speech arraigning Jackson, for which he was never 
forgiven. 

In Monroe's cabinet discussion was equally violent, 
though not made public. Long years afterward Jack- 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 149 

son learned that Calhoun, then secretary of state, had 
favored disavowing Jackson's acts and holding him to 
account, and on the instant his previous admiration 
for the South Carolinian changed to undying hate. 
John Q. Adams upheld him, being the only member 
of the cabinet to do so. He cited authorities on inter- 
national law and instances of history to prove that 
the impetuous general was well within his rights. 
Jackson learned of this at the time, but ungratefully 
pooh-poohed the attempt to thrust him into the aca- 
demic past. 

"Damn Grotius!" he said. "Damn Pufendorf! 
Damn Vattel! This is a mere matter between Jim 
Monroe and myself." 

Jim Monroe meanwhile, with Adams's help, framed 
a reply to Spanish protests which was a triumph of 
diplomacy, since it upheld Jackson, promised to give up 
Pensacola to any one authorized to receive it, and of- 
fered Spain a sum of money for the territory in dis- 
pute, thus managing successfully to be on every side 
of the question at once. And Spain, seeing that 
Florida would sooner or later pass into our hands, 
took the reply and the cash in a friendly spirit, con- 
cluding a treaty in 1819 by which she transferred her 
colony to the United States for the sum of five million 
dollars. 

The first important act of Monroe's second term 
was to appoint Jackson governor of the new Territory 
of Florida, a position the annoyances and embarrass- 
ments of which the hero of New Orleans found to out- 
v/eigh its advantages. It was from this office that he 
resigned in disgust to pass his declining years in Ten- 
nessee. But he was too much a born leader of men 
to be content with molding the destinies and promot- 
ing the victories of horses and cattle. 



I50 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

He returned to the United States Senate in 1823, 
and in 1824 Adams, alive to the strength the general's 
popularity would add to his own unemotional ticket, 
suggested that the vice-presidency would be a nice 
place for his old age. Jackson was in truth less than 
four months older than Adams. The idea of deliber- 
ately accepting second place to anybody did not appeal 
to him, but his claim to first place was worked up so 
effectively during the campaign of 1824, largely 
through the efforts of his friend Major Lewis of Ten- 
nessee, a most adroit politician, that the House of 
Representatives had to choose between him and Mr. 
Adams. 

General Lafayette was in Washington at the time 
this vote was taken and witnessed the meeting between 
Adams and Jackson that night at the White House. 
Jackson hastened to congratulate the successful candi- 
date, and the newspapers noticed and praised the cor- 
diality of victor and vanquished. Perhaps the in- 
fluence of the kindly Frenchman smoothed over the 
rough edges of the situation. They did not long re- 
main smooth. Clay was unforgiven because of his 
speech of censure, and when Jackson learned that Clay 
was to be Adams's secretary of state, the charge of 
bribery rose naturally to his impulsive lips. With the 
passing days his anger grew to include Adams as well, 
and on October 13, 1825, he resigned his seat in 
the Senate and came out squarely as a candidate for 
President in the next election, still more than three 
years in the future. His charge was corruption in 
high places. " Shall the Government or the people 
rule?" he asked, coining a good phrase that carried 
far. Soon he was accusing Adams, in effect, if not 
in words, with being a usurper, and calling him and 
his administration " these enemies of liberty." 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 151 

His election was an innovation. The American 
Presidents heretofore had been men of a different type, 
differently educated, and achieving the Presidency as 
the crowning honor of a long official career, Jack- 
son's civil experiences had been sufficiently varied and 
stretched over a sufficient length of years, but were 
more remarkable for energetic disregard of precedent 
than for carrying out the laws. This, however, 
troubled the rank and file of his followers very little. 
He was a candidate from the new West, where short 
cuts through means to ends were the fashion, and his 
military record, always a formidable asset in this peace- 
loving land of ours, was eminently satisfactory. 

His political methods were largely those of the mili- 
tary chief. This campaign of 1828 showed on both 
sides a more thorough organization and more skilful 
use of party machinery than any that had gone before. 
Feeling ran high, and quarter was neither given nor 
asked. The " silk vestings, printed with excellent like- 
nesses of the candidates," and the tape-needles stamped 
with their names, which can still be found among the 
treasures of granddaughters of that generation, were 
hidden under a deluge of abusive pamphlets. Hand- 
bills spread abroad woodcuts of scurrilous import. One 
headed by a row of coffins charged Jackson with pre- 
meditated murder in duel and in court martial. An- 
other, issued by Jackson's partizans, showed John 
Ouincy Adams using a horsewhip on a crippled old 
soldier who dared come near him to ask a favor. 
Newspapers published extras full of slanders and refu- 
tations in a succession that would seem slow enough 
now, accustomed as we are to a dozen editions in a 
morning, but were then a marvel of journalistic enter- 
prise. 

After Jackson's election his party machinery was 



152 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

not allowed to rust. He and his friends were astute 
enough to see the " penetrating " power of the press, 
and used it throughout his administration. " Every 
deputy postmaster is required to insert in his return 
the title of every newspaper received at his office for 
distribution," Mrs. Trollope was told while in Wash- 
ington. " This return is laid before the secretary of 
state, who perfectly knowing the political character of 
each newspaper, is thus enabled to feel the pulse of 
each limb of the monster mob." 

David Crockett, whose career in Congress was cut 
short by Jackson's mandate in 1831, testifies that " each 
editor was furnished with the journals of Congress 
Jfrom headquarters, and hunted out every vote I had 
missed in four sessions whether from sickness or not, 
no matter, and each was charged against me at $8 [a 
day's pay]. In all I had missed about seventy votes 
which they made amount to $560, and they contended 
I had swindled the Government out of that sum, as 
I had received my pay as other members do." In addi- 
tion his political enemies made spurious engagements 
for him to address meetings all over his district; en- 
gagements that he failed to keep because he knew noth- 
ing about them, while they took care to be on hand to 
ridicule and denounce him. These tricks cost him his 
seat; but at the next election he was ready for them, 
and won despite such tactics. 

When Jackson was renominated and reelected in 
1832, his running-mate was Martin Van Buren of New 
York, whose whole life had been spent in adroit manipu- 
lation of his fellow-voters ; and in this union of the 
political forces and methods of East and West the 
country witnessed an exhibition of political team-work 
the like of which it had not dreamed. This same year 
1832 saw the beginning of the system of nominating 




JOHN C. CALHOUN 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 153 

Presidential candidates in national conventions and of 
setting forth party aims in party platforms. But the 
" spontaneous unanimity " of Jackson's renomination 
was doubtless greatly aided by his firm hold upon the 
press. 

At the time of his first election Jackson's wife was 
still living. Her name was dragged into the canvass, 
and she was subjected to rougher usage than should 
fall to the lot of any woman. She died in the Christ- 
mas season preceding his inauguration. He was de- 
votedly attached to her, and a wave of personal sympa- 
thy swept over the country. The crowds that gathered 
to greet him on his lonely way to Washington met him 
with a respectful silence more eloquent than applause. 
Being American crowds, they remained for the most 
part covered as their ranks opened for the gaunt old 
man in deep mourning who walked bareheaded among 
them in the chill air. " He looked," said a foreigner 
who saw him, " like a gentleman and a soldier." 

It was on February 11, the day the electoral votes 
were counted, that he arrived in Washington and took 
up his residence at Gadsby's, an inn famous in stage- 
coaching days. He declined to call upon President 
Adams, implying that he could not bring himself to 
touch the hand of a man who had attained office 
through unworthy means. He busied himself with the 
office-seekers, who rushed to Washington in incredible 
numbers, likewise avoiding Adams, to flock around the 
power that was to be. Adams, resenting this breach 
of etiquette, took no official or social notice of his suc- 
cessor, and left the city on the third of ]\Iarch, neither 
he nor any member of his cabinet remaining to wel- 
come Jackson to office. 

But the populace was there in force. Never had 
Washington seen such inauguration crowds. A man 



154 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

of the people had been elected President at last, and 
the people came rejoicing to see him take his oath. 
" They really seem to think the country has been 
rescued from some danger," wrote Webster. 

On the morning of the fourth of March those fortu- 
nate enough to secure a commanding position on Capi- 
tol Hill looked down upon Pennsylvania Avenue alive 
with carts and carriages full of women and children, 
their male escorts walking beside them. At last a small 
company of men was seen marching compactly through 
this crowd up the middle of the avenue, one tall figure 
holding his hat in his hand while the wind played 
through his wilful gray locks. There was something 
military in the sight, something most unmilitary in 
the rabble of people shouting themselves hoarse in ac- 
claim of the spare, erect figure. It was an expression 
of popular will and popular trust that gripped the 
heart and sent an ache to the throats even of those 
who feared the " Tennessee Barbarian " and his host. 

After taking the oath of office, Jackson returned to 
the White House on horseback, followed indiscrimi- 
nately by white and black, rich and poor, men, women, 
and children, who swarmed over the lawn and through 
the rooms of the Executive Mansion, where no police 
provision had been made for such an onslaught. The 
courageous old warrior was forced that day to do what 
he seldom did; he retreated, and sought refuge in his 
old quarters at Gadsby's. Current rumor had it that 
a quantity of china and cut glass to the value of several 
thousand dollars was broken in an attempt to get re- 
freshments to the multitude, and that finally great tubs 
of punch were carried out in front of the house, but 
that " hogsheads would not have been enough." 

No man has had warmer supporters or bitterer ene- 
mies than Jackson, and of no man have more contra- 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 155 

dictory descriptions been written than of him. He 
had innate dignity. Webster thought him " more presi- 
dential " than the other candidates in 1824, when the 
others included the imposing Crawford, the learned 
Adams, and Clay with all his magnetism. A life of 
hardship made him look all of his sixty-two years, but 
his long, straight legs still bore him well, and his long, 
narrow face under the iron-gray hair tumbling all ways 
at once was illuminated by small, but wonderfully alert, 
blue eyes that seemed to " scintillate light." 

He was not arrogant, although " not a man to 
suffer a difference of opinion with equanimity." He 
was simply so sure of being right that the possibility 
of being wrong did not find lodgment in his brain; 
and being energetic in the cause of right, things hap- 
pened wherever he might be. 

Things began to happen the moment he was Presi- 
dent. He hated fiercely, and at this instant hated no 
man more bitterly than Henry Clay. Van Buren, who 
was to succeed Clay as secretary of state, was governor 
of New York and could not immediately assume the 
new office. But Jackson did not purpose to leave Clay 
in possession one minute longer than the law required. 
As he was starting to the Capitol to take the oath, he 
thrust a paper into the hands of Colonel James Hamil- 
ton of New York, son of Alexander Hamilton, saying: 

" Colonel, you do not care to see me inaugurated." 

" Indeed I do," the other protested. " I came here 
for that purpose." 

" No," Jackson insisted. " Go to the State House, 
and as soon as you hear the gun fired, I am President 
and you are secretary. Go, and take charge of the de- 
partment." This was the manner of his first appoint- 
ment, and the others were quite as arbitrary. 

Fewer than seventy-five people had been removed 



156 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

from office during the forty years of the Government's 
existence. Washington had removed nine and recalled 
one foreign minister ; John Adams also removed nine ; 
Jefferson thirty-nine ; Madison five, three of them de- 
faulters ; Monroe had displaced nine, and John Quincy 
Adams two. Sentiment in favor of a short tenure 
of the higher federal offices had gradually increased, 
helped on by the refusal of both Washington and Jef- 
ferson to be President a third time. In 1820 a law 
had been passed making four years the legal term for 
certain federal financial offices, and in the States it 
became more and more unusual for governors to serve 
more than two or three successive terms, while in 
some of them the entrance into office of a new gover- 
nor was a signal for turning out the appointees of his 
predecessor. But it was through Jackson that the idea 
of rotation in office reached the national civil service. 
He came into power on a wave of reform, making the 
question, " Shall the Government or the people rule ? " 
do alternate duty with charges of bribery and cor- 
ruption; and in the first year of his Presidency he 
made upward of seven hundred removals, selecting 
successors on some whimsical plan of his own that he 
did not trouble to explain to his supporters. " No 
thought appeared to be given to the fitness of the per- 
sons for their places," according to Colonel Hamilton. 
" I am sure I never heard one word in relation thereto, 
and I certainly had repeated conversations with him in 
regard to these appointments." 

There was doubtless need of change. Forty years 
of undisturbed possession had given time for old age 
to creep in and occupy the chairs of many minor offi- 
cials ; one of the great bureaus was known as the 
" Octogenarian Department." But such wholesale 
turning out spread terror through the government 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 157 

service. When Jackson had been President only a 

week Clay compared the plight of the office-holders to 

that of the inhabitants of Cairo in time of plague. 

" No one knows who is next to encounter the stroke 

» 

of death or, which with many of them is the same 
thing, to be dismissed from office. You have no con- 
ception of the moral tyranny which prevails here." 
And against this moral tyranny he inveighed in the 
drawing-rooms of society, " reclining," as was his 
fashion, perhaps the fashion of the day, on friendly 
and comfortable sofas, while the air pulsated to his 
rich eloquence, and his hearers, many of whom were 
feminine, and most of whom were suffering in appre- 
hension, if not in fact, from the acts of the new tyrant, 
fervently wished that Providence had seen fit to make 
this wise statesman President. 

The Senate, dazed and hypnotized, confirmed Jack- 
son's many appointments as they were sent in. Web- 
ster was convinced that it would have rejected half 
of them if freed from the compelling power of his 
popularity with country constituents. 

The charges of corruption, which had been lavishly 
used, had been sadly overworked, but Jackson made 
the most of the very small proportion of fraud he did 
discover. The only official of any prominence caught 
robbing the Government, a fourth auditor of the 
Treasury, whose stealing amounted to about two thou- 
sand dollars, was promptly convicted and placed in a 
cell, over the door of which Jackson, with grim feroc- 
ity, ordered a label to be placed reading, " Criminal 
Department." 

Thus he started on his term of office, opinionated, 
energetic, and sincere. He was soon at daggers' points 
with Calhoun, who had accepted the vice-presidency 
on the understanding that Jackson wanted only one 



158 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

term and that he was to be his successor. The Presi- 
dent was as bitter as ever against Clay and had quar- 
reled with every member of his cabinet except Van 
Buren, the secretary of state, who was as diplomatic 
as his chief was dictatorial, and deliberately set him- 
self to humor Jackson's eccentricities with a view to 
mastering the situation and climbing into the Presi- 
dency. Fortune favored him in this by throwing a 
social scandal into the political arena, one of those 
small tempests that carry large consequences. 

The cause of the trouble was the vivacious lady 
lately married to General Eaton, Jackson's secretary of 
war. She was referred to in Washington as Bellona, 
because she was plticky and a stirrer-up of strife. 
The ladies of the cabinet thought they knew entirely 
too much about her past both as Peggy O'Neil, the 
jolly and clever daughter of a local inn keeper and later 
as the wife of a purser in the navy who had chosen to 
end his earthly troubles by blowing out his brains. 
They had no intention of taking such a person into their 
exclusive circle, and, drawing their skirts about them, 
refused to sit at table with her or to attend receptions to 
which she was invited. Mrs. Calhoun sided with them, 
thus helping to widen the breach between the President 
and the Vice-President. Van Buren, on the other hand, 
in the freedom of widowerhood, sided with the testy 
Jackson and acquired merit thereby. Jackson chose to 
believe the attack on Mrs. Eaton an attempt to drive 
her husband out of the cabinet, and suspected Clay of 
being at the bottom of it. It was in a way a repetition 
of attacks that had been made upon his own wife. 
His political animosity, his gallantry, — he was an ar- 
dent defender of slandered virtue, — and his natural 
pugnacity were all aroused. He stormed, and or- 



I 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 159 

dered his cabinet to order their wives to treat the 
wife of his secretary of war with respect. The cabinet, 
caught between the upper and nether mill-stones of 
Presidential and domestic tyranny, signified that it was 
helpless. One man, braver than the rest, answered that 
he could not allow the President to interfere in the 
management of his household and that he was willing 
to resign. Jackson thundered that he had not made a 
cabinet to please the ladies, but to govern the country. 

In his encounter with the ladies of Washington, 
Jefferson had routed them. In this more serious 
affair the more wilful President had to submit. 
Gradually the matter died down, but not before it put 
an end to all cordiality between him and the heads 
of the departments. Van Buren only excepted. It was 
common gossip that this quarrel played its part in mak- 
ing Van Buren Vice-President. With his eye on his 
ultimate goal Van Buren retired from Jackson's cabi- 
net in June, 1831, to work up his own candidacy. 
Friendly to the last, Jackson " rode with him out of the 
city," and in August made him Minister to England, a 
recess appointment that could not be confirmed until the 
Senate met in December. Calhoun saw here a chance 
to deal his rival a blow, and raking together the embers 
of the old quarrel, contrived when Congress met to have 
Van Buren's nomination rejected, himself casting the 
deciding vote. Senator Benton heard Calhoun exult. 

" It will kill him, sir. Kill him dead. He will never 
kick, sir, — never kick." 

Benton told a colleague who had voted to please Cal- 
houn that they had made a big mistake. They had 
broken a minister only to elect a vice-president. 

" Good God ! " exclaimed the other. " Why did n't 
you tell me that before I voted? " 



i6o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

After the Eaton episode Jackson's cabinet ministers 
remained heads of departments and nothing more. 
When Jackson wished advice or help he received it 
from a group of half a dozen men personally agreeable 
to him, but without official position or responsibility, 
who became known as his kitchen cabinet. One of 
them was Major Lewis, who had ably managed his 
campaign in 1824. Another was Amos Kendall of 
Massachusetts and Tennessee, whom Harriet Mar- 
tineau described as a " twilight person " working with 
" goblin extent " and " goblin speed " in the affairs of 
his chief. Another was Francis P. Blair, who long 
remained a power in politics. These men were honest 
enough, but deft and crafty, working his bidding with 
consummate skill and keeping the public guessing. 

In this their chief was no whit behind them. One 
element of Jackson's interest for friends and foes 
alike was his unexpectedness. Nobody was quite sure 
what he would do next. Some laid this to studied 
design, some to the natural expression of a tempera- 
ment the very violence of which had its fascination. 
His favorite threat was to " cut off the ears " of any 
one who differed with him : his favorite oath, " By the 
Eternal," a euphemism for a shorter word that would 
have immeasurably distressed his pious wife. 

His intentions were uniformly good. The summing 
up of his foreign policy, " Ask nothing but what is 
right, submit to nothing wrong," was really the- sum- 
ming up of his attitude toward the world. When not 
angry he was just. When angry, which often hap- 
pened, the chances of his being just were about fifty 
in a hundred. Long experience had taught him 
that a certain amount of bluster was effective. Henry 
A. Wise insisted that he was a consummate actor, and 
that often his towering passions were simulated for 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT i6i 

a purpose; after which, the moment the door closed be- 
hind one of his victims, he would resume his pipe with 
a chuckle and say, " He thought I was mad." 

He smoked, Mr. Wise tells us, " as he did everything 
else, with all his might," puff, puff, whiff, whiff, until 
the room was so blue that it was difficult to see the spare 
figure sitting with knees crossed, the long reed pipe- 
stem resting in the hollow between them and extending 
nearly to the floor. Naturally choleric, he had the 
tenderness that goes with a warm, rich nature. Ben- 
ton surprised him at his home in Tennessee sitting be- 
side the fire in the twilight fondling a lamb and a little 
child. He seemed a bit embarrassed at being caught 
thus off his guard. Kendall, his trusted friend and 
amanuensis, protested that in all their intercourse he 
never saw him in a rage or heard him swear. 

On the whole, he usually acted better than his 
friends dared hope. Buchanan, himself a model of 
propriety in dress and deportment, tells of going to 
inform him of the visit of a distinguished English 
lady, and of finding him looking more than usually 
unkempt and unpresidential behind his haze of tobacco 
smoke. Gathering his courage, Buchanan asked re- 
spectfully if his Excellency did not wish to make some 
change in his toilet before granting the interview. 
Jackson eyed him while he knocked the ashes out of 
his pipe with great deliberation and answered : 

" Buchanan, I want to give you a little piece of 
advice that I hope you will remember. I knew a man 
once who made his fortune by attending to his own busi- 
ness. Tell the lady I will see her presently." And 
" presently " he appeared shaven and brushed, in clothes 
of ceremony, with a manner so gracious and cordial 
that the lady exclaimed on leaving, " Your republican 
President is the royal model of a gentleman." 



i62 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Naturally hospitable, his home in Tennessee was 
overrun with guests, among whom he moved more as 
a fellow-guest than as a host. Sometimes he sent out 
and compelled friends to come in. Learning that the 
son of Daniel Boone was staying at a near-by inn, he 
sent him the message, " Your father's dog should not 
stay at a tavern where I have a house." He did not 
leave his hospitality behind him in Tennessee, but as 
President lived up to what he considered the require- 
ments of the position, spending all his salary in a hos- 
pitality both lavish and generous, though himself par- 
taking sparingly of only milk, bread, and vegetables 
even at state dinners. 

In Tennessee he had kept his coach, with four hand- 
some grays and servants in suitable livery, and was so 
much inclined to follow such fashions that plain John 
Brown of Virginia, an old Revolutionist and " one of 
the near 200,000 freemen which I hope have taught 
Congress a lesson not soon to be forgotten," felt con- 
strained after his election to warn him against the 
pomp and frivolity at Washington that could be 
pardoned in " General La Fiatte " because of the " vole- 
tile fancy of a Frenchman," but that no truly wise man 
should approve. Jackson understood the homely, well- 
meant advice, and indorsed it, " A friendly letter, — 
worth reading. Private." 

While ignorant of books, Jackson talked remarkably 
well, though occasionally mispronouncing or even mis- 
using words. He did not write with ease, but knew 
enough to use the talents of one better educated. 
Amos Kendall, that " twilight person," served him as 
scribe. Jackson dictated his ideas through a cloud of 
smoke, Kendall writing and reading aloud paragraph 
by paragraph, Jackson correcting for greater clearness 
of meaning, and the collaboration going on until of a 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 163 

sudden the younger man would be astonished at the 
masterly power of the President's thought. Jackson 
had the keener mind, Kendall the readier pen. The 
two combined well, and their joint political letters are 
marvels of apparent frankness covering subtle sug- 
gestion. 

While on the subject of Jackson's literary accom- 
plishments it is permissible to recall the fact that Har- 
vard gave him the degree of LL.D. He had been a 
judge and presumably a lawyer, but the absurdity of 
conferring this degree upon a man who heeded no law 
but his own will weighed heavily on a part of the Cam- 
bridge community. President Quincy of the college 
was approached and solemnly asked if it could not be 
avoided. 

" Why, no," he replied. " Since the people have 
twice decided that this man knows law enough to be 
their ruler, it is not for Harvard College to maintain 
that they are mistaken." 

Jackson rose from a sick-bed to receive the degree. 
At sight of him the critical Cambridge audience was 
moved to something like admiration, the younger 
Quincy tells us, and he goes on to repeat the apocryphal 
story of how Jackson responded to President Ouincy's 
Latin speech. What he really did was to answer in a 
few modest words of English spoken so low as to be 
scarcely heard. But rumor had it that he replied : 

" Caveat emptor : corpus delicti ; ex post facto ; dies 
irae ; e pluribus unum ; usque ad nauseam ; Ursa Major ; 
sic semper tyrannis ! quid pro quo ; resquiescat in 
pace." 

" The story," says Mr. Quincy, " was on the whole 
so good as showing how the man of the people could 
triumph over the crafts and subleties of classical pun- 
dits that all Philistia wanted to believe it. And so 



i64 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

it came to pass that as time went on part of Philistia 
did believe it, for I have heard it mentioned as an 
actual occurrence." 

That part of the voters who resented the tyranny of 
" King Andrew " rallied around Clay, and taking to 
themselves a name consecrated by English usage to the 
opposition, became the Whig party, while Jackson's 
partizans, especially the unlettered, who saw in him a 
man pure in motive like themselves and strong enough 
to put his theories into practice, loyally applauded all 
his acts as much from devotion to the man as from 
belief in his policies. Thus early in his administration 
the country found itself again divided into two 
great political camps. The distinction even entered 
peaceable kitchens, where Whigs and Democrats be- 
came the names of two breakfast breads, the recipes 
of which survived down to the date of a childhood not 
yet remote. Democrats were rich and smooth and 
crumbly, almost like pound-cake, a little deceptive corn- 
meal smuggled into the flour adding to their specious 
air of butter and sugar richness. Whigs were a sort of 
popover, very high and imposing to look upon and 
very empty in the middle. 

It was an invidious distinction. The Whigs num- 
bered among themselves men of solidity and substance 
quite as much as their opponents. In fact, substance 
in the monetary sense was one of the crimes charged 
against them by the Democrats. The Whigs advo- 
cated the National Bank, which Jackson, for reasons 
wholly sincere, though partly personal, — and it was 
hard for him to consider anything impersonally, — bent 
every energy to destroy. This became the great issue 
of his second term, as the overshadowing question of 
his first term was Nullification. 

At some time in his political career Jackson favored 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 165 

a constitutional amendment making a President 
ineligible for renomination. But circumstances alter 
cases, and whatever prejudice he may have felt against 
a second term vanished utterly as the election of 1832 
drew near. Although Nullification was an issue, he 
himself seemed to take greater interest in the over- 
throw of the National Bank, for which he had con- 
ceived intense dislike, believing its officials corrupt, and 
that it was being " converted into a permanent elec- 
tioneering machine." He proposed to remove the 
Treasury deposits in its custody and place them with 
State banks. 

The charter granted to the National Bank in 18 16 
would not expire until 1836. There was therefore no 
need for making it an issue in this campaign and the 
Bank officials were not anxious to have the question 
raised. But Jackson's hostility was no secret, and 
Clay argued that it was best to apply for a renewal of 
the charter at once, while its friends were sure of safe 
majorities in Congress, and while a veto would alienate 
democratic supporters of the Bank. Late in 1831 
the National Republicans nominated Clay to be their 
candidate for President. Jackson was the inevitable 
candidate of the Democrats ; thus the campaign opened 
with the champions of the Bank and of its overthrow as 
the respective party leaders. In January, 1832, Clay 
introduced a bill for the charter's renewal. This was 
passed, and Jackson, not the man to decline a challenge, 
promptly returned it with a veto message that made an 
excellent campaign document, whatever its merits as 
a treatise on finance. 

In one sense it was a contest between town ways and 
country prejudices, — the distrust of the farmer for 
the methods of the man of business. Jackson, the 
people's candidate, adored in the rural districts, cham- 



i66 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

pioned hard coin, and his " yellow boys " were con- 
trasted sonorously in campaign speeches against 
" Clay's rags " and the paper notes issued by the bank. 
Advocacy of the bank was one of the few questions 
upon which Clay, Webster, and Calhoun were all 
agreed ; but the rural population still far outnumbered 
that of the towns, and Jackson won. His victory was 
made more decisive by a wave of anti-Masonry, one of 
the semi-patriotic, semi-religious agitations against 
secret societies that sweep over the country at intervals. 
A weak member of the order of Masons had attempted 
to reveal its secrets, and soon after mysteriously disap- 
peared. This added a touch of grisly human tragedy 
to the campaign, and the cleverness of Democratic man- 
agers made it a potent counter-irritant to the bank 
question, winning thereby many a voter from Clay's 
standard. 

Jackson received 219 electoral votes, and Clay only 
49. Fortified by this tremendous majority, Jackson 
gave his will free rein during his second term, using 
the veto power more frequently than all previous Pres- 
idents and conducting himself generally after the man- 
ner of a warm-hearted, well-meaning tyrant. 

He pursued his war against the Bank, dismissing 
one secretary of the treasury who refused to remove 
government deposits from the national banks to state 
banks already in existence, appointing in his stead 
the same Roger B, Taney who later became Chief- 
Justice of the United States, and achieved a lasting 
and unenviable place in the history of American slav- 
ery by his famous Dred Scott Decision. 

The President's removal of government deposits to 
state banks precipitated a long discussion in Congress, 
but neither Clay's eloquence nor Webster's arguments, 
nor the combined oratory of a three months' Senate 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 167 

debate sufficed to turn Jackson from his purpose. 
He honestly beheved the National Bank corrupt, dis- 
trusted and personally disliked its president, and 
cherished the scheme for its downfall with the devo- 
tion of parenthood. 

Clay's final effort, a personal appeal made to Vice- 
President Van Buren upon the floor of the Senate, to 
use his great influence with Jackson to defeat the 
measure, was met by studied insolence. That usually 
well-mannered politician meant to succeed Jackson and 
did not purpose to endanger his chances by a quarrel. 

Clay thereupon introduced a resolution censuring 
Jackson, which was passed by the Senate, but not 
agreed to in the House. Another senator instantly 
moved that this gross insult to the President of the 
United States be expunged from the record, a motion 
that he repeated at intervals for the next three years, 
until it was agreed to, and the book was brought in 
with much solemnity, black lines drawn around the 
resolution, and the words " Expunged by order of the 
Senate " written across it. Jackson in recognition 
gave a great dinner to the expungers and their wives. 

Contrary to Jackson's expectations, suppression of 
the Bank did not work unalloyed good. For a time, 
indeed, there was an illusion of great prosperity. 
Large transactions in public lands took place, and in- 
creased imports went on piling up revenue. By 1835 
the national debt was virtually extinguished. As a 
means of disposing of the government funds that still 
went on accumulating, non-interest-bearing loans were 
made to the States in proportion to their population, 
on the understanding that part of the money was to 
be used in establishing a system of public schools. 
This was a favorite project of Clay's. 

But the great apparent increase in wealth all over 



i68 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the country brought its own troubles. A craze for 
all kinds of speculation took possession of the people. 
Internal improvements on a scale too big for even the 
marvelous growth of America, and private enterprises 
of every degree of imprudence, were begun. The 
number of state banks, — Jackson's Pets, as they were 
called, — greatly increased, and " wild-cat " banks 
sprang into being, difficult to distinguish from actual 
counterfeiting, since they had no more solid claims to 
respectable business life than " a mythical home, a re- 
sounding name, and a supply of handsomely engraved 
notes." What little hard money had previously been 
in circulation speedily disappeared under a drift of 
state bank-notes good, poor, and utterly irredeemable. 

Jackson tried vainly to counteract all this by order- 
ing the coinage of gold and silver, and forbidding the 
issue of paper money in denominations smaller than 
five dollars. Then, against the opposition of his cabi- 
net, he issued the famous Specie Circular, which an- 
nounced that after a certain date only gold and silver 
would be received in payment for public lands. Far 
from helping matters, this made them worse, and his 
ill-considenred measures resulted in the panic of 1837, 
during which the next administration reaped the har- 
vest of his attempt to bend the laws of trade to his 
stubborn will. 

The spoils system, Nullification, and war upon the 
National Bank had given the country much to talk 
about during his first four years of office. The other 
four were quite as prolific. The Bank remained an 
ever-present issue. Nullification, though defeated, let 
loose the slavery question to be argued in its moral as 
well as in its economic aspects, with immoral and un- 
economic accompaniments of riots, lynchings and in- 
cendiarism even in New England, where Whittier was 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 169 

stoned, and a gallows was erected before Garrison's 
Boston home. Anti-Masonry, a minor issue of the 
campaign of 1832, was followed by a wave of anti- 
Catholic feeling in which church property was attacked 
and destroyed. The unexpected evils of the new bank- 
ing system led to much suffering. Bread riots and the 
gutting of flour warehouses resulted. One victim of 
this violence issued a card pointing out that wanton 
destruction of an article is not the way to make it 
cheaper or more plentiful; a grim truth, hard to im- 
press upon an angry mob. 

While Jackson's whole administration was a sea- 
son of growing lawlessness, there is one aspect in which 
this turbulence appears natural and not at all to be re- 
gretted. It was the country's age of belligerent op- 
timism, a season comparable to the fighting age of the 
growing boy, who is not so much bellicose as boy. It 
is his youthful way of expressing dissatisfaction with 
things as they are, and also the optimistic young faith 
that is in him that things as they are can be altered 
for the better. 

Jackson, the commanding figure of the administra- 
tion, came in for much praise and much blame. He 
was the first President upon whose life an attempt 
was made. A pistol was aimed at his heart at the 
distance of only a few feet as he was leaving the 
Capitol after attending a congressional funeral. The 
percussion-cap failed to act, and the would-be assassin 
tried again with another pistol ready in his left hand. 
The wiry old President rushed upon him with blazing 
eyes and uplifted cane, and at the same instant a by- 
stander felled the man to the ground. He was so 
evidently insane that he was never brought to trial. 

Public feeling, stirred by discussion, took absurd 
forms of revenge. One young eccentric vented his 



170 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

spite by sawing off the head of an image of Jackson 
that had been placed as a figurehead on one of the old 
warships. He accomplished this queer task on a dark 
and stormy night, when the sound of wind and rain 
drowned the noise of his saw. The vandalism raised 
a great outcry, — almost as great as though the surgery 
had been performed upon Jackson himself. A reward 
of a thousand dollars was offered for the offender, 
but he remained undiscovered, until years later he chose 
to boast of the exploit. 

Democratic party managers were skilful enough to 
turn much of the distress into political capital. There 
was some talk among Jackson's admirers of a third 
term, but it was not encouraged by him or by the 
man who meant to succeed him. The Whigs mean- 
while were so divided among themselves that they 
failed even to hold a national convention. 

Van Buren was triumphantly elected, and on a beau- 
tiful and balmy fourth of March, the kind of inaugura- 
tion day that dawns once in twenty years in Washing- 
ton to lull suspicion of that treacherous date, with its 
blizzard possibilities, Jackson and his chosen successor 
rode down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White 
House to the Capitol in a barouche made from timbers 
taken from the old frigate Constitution. It was upon 
the older man that the eyes of the vast crowd rested 
rather than upon the smug and smiling Mistletoe 
Politician whose fame and fortune had been nourished 
on the virile sap of Old Hickory. There was silence, 
not so much in distrust of the new incumbent as in 
tribute to the passing of a man of mark. It may be, 
as one of his critics declared, that the outgoing Presi- 
dent owed everything to a chance of battle, the vic- 
tory at New Orleans, " that springboard from which 
General Jackson vaulted into the saddle." But once 



A DEMOCRATIC DESPOT 171 

in the saddle he had ridden gallantly, stopping at no 
obstacle, and had never been unhorsed. He had been 
obstinate, and often blinded by passion, but on the 
whole he was leaving the difficult office more popular 
than when he entered it, an achievement equaled only 
by Washington and Jefferson. 

Now he was laying down the cares of office and 
passing into the solemn shadow of old age. There was 
silence as the two rode down the avenue; but after 
the ceremony was over, when Jackson began to descend 
the steps of the Capitol to his carriage, the feelings of 
the multitude broke forth in a tribute of real affection. 
The old man bowed in acknowledgment in the kingly 
way he sometimes had, and those who were near 
enough saw that his thin, wrinkled face worked with 
emotion. 



CHAPTER IX 

GIANTS IN CONGRESS 

THE greater the naval hero the less inclined does 
he seem to leave his chosen element for the 
uncertain and uncharted sea of political 
favor. The many marine victories of the war of 1812 
added nothing but pride and enthusiasm to politics, 
but the sparse land victories developed three new Pres- 
idential possibilities in Harrison, Scott, and Jackson, 
Its effect on the country in opening up new territory 
and introducing new ways and thoughts, was to bring 
into public life a distinctly new type of man. 

These younger men were far less conventional in 
mind than their predecessors ; far less like transplanted 
Englishmen. Even their bodies showed the impress 
of life upon a new continent. Tall and spare, their 
deep-set eyes glowing with purpose, the Clays and 
Websters and Calhouns of that period could not for a 
moment have been mistaken for men of the generation 
that produced Washington and Hamilton. They had 
drawn something from the wilderness they conquered ; 
something more from the fact that they had conquered 
both the wilderness and their English kinsmen. Like 
the men of the earlier generation they were intensely 
earnest in their politics, but America loomed very large 
in their eyes, and they wore their earnestness with a 
different air. It had in it less of the proselyting spirit 
and more of the joy of strife. The boast of victory 

172 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 173 

was often on their lips. They were the Wagner heroes 
of our congressional annals. 

Politics were a deep national concern and at the same 
time the great national sport. ]\lost of the new men 
aspired to seats in Congress and many were elected. 
That epitome of the people was exceedingly varied and 
picturesque, for besides the new element, noted men 
of the old school were to be found in both branches 
of Congress. John Onincy Adams had returned to 
the House of Representatives to carve a new reputa- 
tion out of the years of middle life and old age. 
John Randolph of Roanoke, descendant of Pocahontas, 
showing the Indian strain in his strange complexion, 
was a marked figure in his buckskin breeches and blue 
riding coat of antique cut. In the last century when 
a lank stripling, he had had the temerity to oppose 
Patrick Henry in debate and he kept the ascendancy 
this youthful assurance won him. Always dreaded 
as an enemy, never quite trusted as a friend, he had 
been a power and was so still, though now emaciated 
and old, the victim of drugs and driven by his restless 
demon into all manner of physical contortions. Some 
one called him the " shadow of a monkey " as he rose 
to fling vitriolic remarks into the arena of debate. 

Among the new men were some that the fathers of 
the Republic would not have deemed fit for places in 
the Congress they created. These were men of small 
learning with no claim to belong to the " gentry." 
David Crockett, for example, that Irish American of 
keen mother-wit and lamentable lack of refinement, 
could scarcely have been a member of the earlier body. 
Yet he was typical of an important element in the 
growing West. He grew to manhood on the banks 
of a creek in Tennessee, ran away from his father's 
uncomfortable cabin before he was of age; married 



174 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

early, and gladly exchanged the sordid life of a frontier 
home for the less monotonous privations of Indian 
fighting. After the Creek war he had pressed on into 
the wilderness beyond the zone of law and order, con- 
vinced that he could get along without order as well 
as anybody ; and by processes as imperceptible and 
inevitable as the movement of a glacier, found himself 
first local magistrate and then a participant in state, 
and later, national affairs. When the number of set- 
tlers made some rude kind of government necessary, 
a " corporation " was formed, and Crockett as leading 
citizen dispensed justice, relying on " natural born 
sense," for he boasted that he never read a page of a 
law book in his life. Reading and writing were so 
foreign to his habits that making out warrants in 
" real writing " vexed him sorely. He learned to do 
this, however, and in time brought himself to write 
an autobiography, in which he registered his protest 
against convention in one delightful line : " I despise 
this way of spelling contrary to nature." 

Conscious that he was ignorant of " government," 
he prided himself on knowing a great deal about human 
nature, and acted on what he knew. He let other can- 
didates talk politics while he listened and learned ; and 
when called upon for the inevitable speech told stories 
until he was ready to draw his audience after him to 
the bar leaving a vacuum to be addressed by his suc- 
cessor. His costume on these occasions was one which 
he pronounced ideal for campaigning, its principal fea- 
ture being a large buckskin hunting shirt with two 
huge pockets having a capacity of " about a peck 
each, one to hold a twist of tobacco, and the other a 
bottle." Such tactics bring to mind General Bosquet's 
criticism of Napoleon's wslj " C'est magnifique, mais, 
ce n'est pas la guerre." .War or not, they landed him 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 175 

twice in the national House of Representatives; and 
after being once surprised off his guard and beaten, he 
defeated Jackson's perfect poHtical machine and re- 
appeared on the floor of the House so elated as to be 
quite insufferable. 

Honest George Kremer of Pennsylvania, forceful 
by mere weight of good intentions, whose legislative 
equipment consisted of a gaudy leopard-skin overcoat 
and an innocent propensity to be a cat's-paw for more 
wily congressmen, was a man of some education but 
not of the old type. Neither was Samuel Houston 
of Tennessee, later of Texas, with his broad sombrero, 
his rings, and his ruffles, whittling little bits of wood, 
as he sat listening to his colleagues, or laying aside this 
amusement to launch into vivid descriptions of West- 
ern life. 

Statesmen of an earlier day held their auditors by 
their subject rather than their eloquence. Their style 
was solid, and top-heavy with Latin quotation. The 
new men not only had something to say, but greater 
charm in saying it. The speeches of the unlettered 
were as free and breezy as the West from which they 
came. Those of the more educated took on a captivat- 
ing swing and roll. In the mouths of master orators 
high-flown periods rang true, like golden coin, adding 
poetry to patriotism. The country went orator mad. 
Political speeches were unrivaled in public interest even 
by horse-racing. 

Here, too, the spirit of the new generation was felt. 
Official and resident Washington crowded the halls of 
Congress to hear a good speech. A waiting world 
lingered patiently from early morning to candle-light 
if necessary, to be instructed or entertained ; but it was 
restive at being bored. In Congress, all through the 
country, and on the frontier were people deeply inter- 



176 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ested in politics and politicians, but knowing neither 
Latin nor Greek. These refused to accept a speech as 
good merely because it bristled with dead words. 

Randolph, a brilliant example of the old school, was 
a rank offender in their eyes, flashing his " intellectual 
jewelry " before dazzled and often scandalized listen- 
ers. His opponents were chary of rousing him to use 
that caustic tongue, but George Kremer one day replied 
to him with a torrent of Pennsylvania Dutch and a 
whirlwind of angry gesture in such feigned indigna- 
tion that Randolph took offense at the manner, the 
matter of the discourse being quite beyond him. When 
Kremer sat down, mopping his brow, Randolph curtly 
demanded a translation, to which the Pennsylvanian 
retorted : " When the gentleman from Virginia con- 
descends to translate his dead languages so that com- 
mon men can know what he is talking about, I will 
translate my remarks, made in the living tongue of my 
own constituents." For once the laugh was against 
the Virginian. 

The upper chamber was impressive also, if less pic- 
turesque. " At a few yards' distance from this spot," 
wrote De Tocqueville, when he visited Washington in 
1 83 1, "is the door of the Senate which contains within 
a small sphere a large proportion of the celebrated men 
of America." 

The roll of its members justified De Tocqueville's 
estimate; but the niajority served only as a background 
for the great triumvirate : Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. 
Their span was nearly the same. Clay being five years 
the senior of the other two. All died within a space 
of little more than two years, Calhoun in 1850, 
Webster and Clay in 1852. All began their congres- 
sional careers at about thirty and were absorbed in 
the same questions. Coming from the West, the 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 177 

North and the extreme South, they approached these 
questions from the angle of their respective sections. 
Each had a great following, yet not one reached the 
goal of his ambition, the Presidency. Clay was the 
most picturesque ; Webster the most imposing ; Cal- 
houn the most coldly logical, perhaps the most am- 
bitious. 

Clay had the fewest advantages in youth. His cam- 
paign name, " the Mill-boy of the Slashes," referred 
to his days of poverty near Richmond when he car- 
ried grain to mill and trod the obscure round of coun- 
try drudgery, deprived of even the little school training 
then available. A few months in a store, and the 
good fortune of being taken into the office of George 
Wythe, that fine man under whom Jefferson and John 
Marshall studied law, opened his way to a career. 
Four years in this office as amanuensis and one year 
as a student under the attorney general of Virginia, 
won Clay his license to practise. He then went to 
Kentucky to begin life as a lawyer. 

The verdict that Lincoln so unsparingly passed on 
his own attainments, '* education defective," can be ap- 
plied to this slender equipment of Clay's. But legal 
training was not then the elaborate technical business 
it has since become, and every bit of knowledge Clay 
possessed was always ready to use, his gift of words 
rounding out all deficiencies and creating the impres- 
sion that he knew a great deal about any subject under 
discussion. One of his biographers calls this his " in- 
voluntary showiness." For many years he labored to 
supplement his limited education by reading history 
or science daily and repeating what he read " off 
hand," sometimes to an audience of cornstalks, some- 
times in the barn before ruminating cattle. 

Prominent in Kentucky by the time he was twenty- 



178 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

three, he was elected to the United States Senate and 
took his seat in that body, nobody objecting, three 
months or more before reaching the legal age of thirty. 
From that time until his death at the age of seventy- 
five, he was a giant figure in politics, equally in the 
public eye as senator, speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, secretary of state under Adams, Presidential 
candidate, or serving his country abroad. Five times 
he tried to be President and was beaten; twice in 
convention, three times by popular majorities. Yet 
he enjoyed a personal devotion unique in our history. 
One of his admiring critics said he could gather larger 
audiences and poll fewer votes than any man in Amer- 
ica. Clay has been accused of a cuckoo-like propensity 
for annexing the ideas of others. This is hardly fair 
when almost every American statesman whose career 
covers many years can be convicted of boxing the 
political compass on one or more popular issues. 
Rapidly changing conditions made this almost inev- 
itable; and in the forty odd years of their prominence, 
Webster, Calhoun, and Clay performed an intricate 
and solemn sort of political dance, now all opposed, 
rarely all united, but changing partners with the vary- 
ing issues. 

The word compromise is inextricably bound up with 
the name of Clay. Had he been less anxious to please 
all factions, he might possibly have realized his dream 
of being President. But his fearlessness in pushing 
any measure dear to his heart does not accord with 
the idea of a time-server. Some one said he was not 
a good judge of political distance. His course in first 
opposing John Quincy Adams, then making him Presi- 
dent, and accepting office under him, was a political 
indiscretion, but not a crime. As a young man he 
opposed slavery at a time when the act was most un- 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 179 

popular in Kentucky. He did not hesitate to incur the 
enmity of Andrew Jackson, nor to champion the 
" American System " of protection, declaring himself 
willing if need be to defy " the South, the President 
and the Devil." 

How much of his success depended upon the charm 
of his personality, who can say? The " Gallant Harry 
of the West " was tall and plain of feature, but digni- 
fied and affable ; and there was a ring in his voice that 
convinced his hearers of his deep sincerity. In the 
cold light of print his speeches do not read well, either 
as literature or logic; but charged with the persua- 
siveness of his voice and the impulsiveness of his man- 
ner, they thrilled his audiences. 

Webster instructed his hearers, but Clay carried his 
by storm. He was filled with that strange compelling 
power of personal magnetism, to which his friends 
gave themselves up without reserve and that his op- 
ponents recognized as something to be fought but im- 
possible to be ignored. The wary hesitated to venture 
within its influence. " General, may I introduce you 
to Henry Clay?" Horace Greeley heard a friend ask 
a new congressman. " No, sir ! " was the answer. 
*' I am his adversary, and choose not to subject myself 
to his fascination." 

Twice he announced and carried out his determi- 
nation to retire from public life. In 1831 Webster 
called him back to battle against Calhoun and Nullifi- 
cation. " Everything valuable in the Government is 
to be fought for, and we need your arm in the fight," 
he wrote him. " It would be an infinite gratification 
to have your aid, or rather your lead." 

Ten years later his farewell to the Senate was 
dramatic in the extreme. Galleries and floor were 
crowded as in stately sentences he paid his tribute to the 



i8o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

grandeur of the body he was leaving and called down 
the blessing of Heaven upon his successor. The 
silence when he ended was itself a tribute. Then after 
a moment the Senate adjourned. " Clay's leaving 
Congress was something like the soul leaving the 
body," wrote Crittenden, on whom fell the difficult 
task of filling his empty seat. 

But neither weariness of office nor the malice of 
his enemies could keep him long away from the post 
that was his by right. Those who saw him back in 
his old place in the closing years of his life felt all 
the old charm and all the old eagerness, though the 
hair that tumbled over his brow was white and the 
hand that brushed it aside M^as pallid and shaking. 
Despite his five years' seniority he still seemed young, 
compared to Webster. 

Of the latter Fredrika Bremer wrote: "In the 
middle of the camp sits the Colossus, Daniel Webster, 
in his arm-chair, with his sallow cheek and brow." 
To her he seemed possessed of kingly dignity, and she 
thought that he must once have been very handsome. 
Above middle height, powerfully athletic in his young 
manhood, with hair and skin rivaling those of the 
darkest Spaniard, his appearance had been striking, if 
not handsome. His expression was not at all benev- 
olent. There was a bon mot current in Washington 
that nobody could be as wise as Webster looked, — not 
even Webster himself. Majesty and impressiveness 
were gifts with which he was dowered at birth. It is 
said that when Mr. Christopher Gore of ^Boston took 
the tall New Hampshire lad into his office he did so 
entirely " on his looks," and for a week forgot even 
to ask the name of his new law student. 

We are also told that when Webster entered Con- 
gress in 1813, a practically unknown man, he was at 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS i8i 

once appointed to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 
again " on his looks " apparently. Calhoun was chair- 
man of this important committee, — doubly important 
in time of war, — and Clay was speaker of the House 
of Representatives. This was the first time Fate 
brought together the three men whose names added 
luster to Congress for forty years thereafter. 

Being of the opposition and unknown, Webster's 
first duties were insignificant, but the power of forg- 
ing to the front was his birthright, and in six weeks 
his leadership was established. Like Washington, he 
is reported to have said that it required constant effort 
to keep down the strong passions of his nature. Per- 
haps both men over-emphasized repression and pro- 
duced the idea of stilted formality in the minds of their 
countrymen. It is equally hard to imagine Webster 
sober and yet genial, or Washington indulging in a 
really hearty laugh. 

Naturally Webster's unusual complexion and his 
unconcealed presidential ambitions brought forth a 
crop of sly congressional jokes which we may be 
sure stopped short of his ears. Some of them sur- 
vived to the time of the Civil War. Benjamin Butler 
reporting on the number of " contrabands " within his 
lines early in the rebellion, remarked in passing that 
many of them were " about the complexion of the late 
Mr. Webster." And Caleb Gushing, pretending to 
overhear a group of Negroes talking about Webster's 
prospects in 1838, reported that one of them said, 
" We-all kin begin to hoi' up our haids now. Dey 
say Mr. Webster gwine' be de nex President, — and 
jes' look at him, — he 's black as any ob us." 

Despite his New England birth one can imagine the 
flash in his eyes at such a story, — those wonderful 
deep-set eyes to whose power every observer paid 



i82 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tribute. There was a legend afloat in his lifetime that 
a mere look from him was enough to unmask deceit 
and send a perjurer stumbling from the witness-box. 
An even greater tribute to the accusing power of his 
gaze is the story Horace Greeley tells in his " Recol- 
lections of a Busy Life," of how Stephen A. Douglas, 
a young man in the Senate when Webster was an old 
one, tried with all the tricky cocksureness of youth to 
move forward a bill in which he was interested. 
" That is not the way we do business in the Senate, 
sir," Webster admonished him, and under the reproof 
of his look and words Douglas quivered like a school- 
boy. 

Webster's voice, a " deep and impressive bass," ac- 
corded well with his majestic appearance. Instead of 
raising it and thundering forth his emphasis, as was 
the fashion of his colleagues, he had a way of dropping 
it at moments of climax, and was the more impressive 
for the quiet. One who heard him address the Sen- 
ate in his old age, said that he began " calmly, heavily, 
and without apparent life," but that before the end of 
his speech, " his cheek had acquired the glow of youth, 
his figure became more erect, he seemed slender and 
full of vivacity; and as he spoke the last concluding 
words he stood in full, manly, almost Apollo-like 
beauty in the midst of that fascinated, listening as- 
sembly ; stood, still calm, without any apparent design, 
but as if reposing himself happy and free, in the quiet 
grandeur of the song which he had sung." 

He did not impress this sympathetic observer in the 
way that Clay did, as the patriotic hero, shouting his 
battle-cry and leading on to victory. He was rather 
the great national watchman, on the lookout that no 
harm befall the Constitution. 

Herein perhaps is the reason for the core of failure 



I 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 183 

in the midst of Webster's success. He was a critic 
rather than a workman in the repubhc. He was in 
the opposition most of his poHtical Hfe, in an attitude 
of finding fault, but not of offering an adequate 
remedy. His one earnest enthusiasm was the Consti- 
tution. But he could not quite forget himself in any- 
thing he did, and missed the Presidency because of 
self-seeking. 

Clay also missed it because of self-seeking. He 
tried to reconcile things unreconcilable. 

Calhoun missed the same prize by opposing the in- 
stinct of the people that the country must remain one 
and undivided. It has been said that he had a noble 
intellect, but that his nature did not stand the strain 
of politics. During his father's lifetime and his own, 
the family fortunes traversed the long distance be- 
tween the bottom and the top of the slave-owning 
Southern aristocracy. His early attitude was far less 
sectional than it became in later years. Marriage and 
increasing means and ambition all impelled him toward 
that advocacy of States' Rights upon which he staked 
his reputation and almost his life. Native of South 
Carolina, graduate of Yale, and student for three years 
in the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, his train- 
ing was more conventional than that of Clay, tumbled 
bodily into the Senate with practically no schooling; 
or Webster, entering the House with his inexperience 
veneered by his amazing dignity. 

Personally Calhoun impressed men with a conviction 
of his superiority. His stiff hair stood erect over 
features capable of great play of expression, though 
stonily calm in repose. A person who saw him in one 
mood called him " the cast-iron man." Another 
likened him to a burning volcano. His style of speak- 
ing, while clear, was monotonous because of a recur- 



i84 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ring emphasis that tired the ear ; and his speeches were 
without eloquence and deHvered almost without ges- 
ture. Greeley called him *' eminently a logician, terse, 
vigorous, relentless." 

As Vice-President he did his own presiding over 
the Senate, which was something of a novelty, it hav- 
ing become the custom for the Vice-President to stay 
at home and allow some senator to perform that duty. 
He announced that he would draw no salary without 
assuming its responsibilities. In private speech he was 
very frank, especially with young men, whose society 
he courted and over whom he wielded great influence. 
One from Boston, to whom he was especially gracious, 
says that while he rarely mentioned slavery, it colored 
all his opinions. The substance of his confidential 
talks with these young men appeared to be : " Now, 
from what I have said to you, I think you will see 
that the interests of the gentlemen of the North and 
those of the South are identical." 

Step by step his political utterances led him on from 
his early attitude, that disunion would be a calamity 
and that trade in slaves was an " odious traffic," to the 
point where he became so vigorous a champion of his 
section's passionate belief in slavery, that only Web- 
ster's eloquence and Jackson's imperious will backed 
by powder prevented his bringing about the disunion he 
had once openly condemned. 

Perhaps the most famous speeches ever made upon 
the floor of the Senate were those inspired by his States 
Rights doctrine of Nullification, which was in effect 
that the rights of individual States so far exceeded the 
right of the United States as a whole, that any one 
of them might declare laws passed by Congress to be 
null and void; and if this were objected to, might 
withdraw from the Union. It was no new theory. 




WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 185 

The Alien and Sedition laws of 1799 had brought 
forth the same assertion in the Virginia and Kentucky 
Resolutions; and the Hartford Convention of 1814 
voiced the same idea. This time the question arose 
over collecting certain taxes and duties prescribed by 
the high tariff of 1828, which the Southern States 
thought unjust to their section. Slavery sentiment en- 
tered into it, as did also ambition and personal enmity. 
An attempt was made by means of it to array the West 
against the East, and to combine the dissatisfied ele- 
ments of the West and South. Weeks and months of 
discussion removed it from the original plane of a 
tariff discussion to the acute stage of interpreting con- 
stitutional law. The heightened sectional bitterness 
culminated in full-fledged plans for disunion, with all 
the essentials of incipient revolution, — oaths, agree- 
ments, pledges of troops and funds, and sacrifices of 
the most sacred honor, as well as the trimmings of such 
enterprises, — badges, medals, blue cockades, and but- 
tons stamped with South Carolina's emblem, the pal- 
metto tree. These last, by the way, were manufac- 
tured in Massachusetts and when President Jackson 
went North to receive his degree of LL.D. he was 
shown whole cards of them and told in Yankee jest, 
that was half earnest, that he ought to pay for them, 
since his action had rendered them worthless. He 
" seemed amused that ' treason in South Carolina had 
a commercial value in Massachusetts.' " 

Calhoun, although Vice-President of the United 
States, was the center and forefront of this movement, 
both in South Carolina and in the long discussion of 
its varied phases in Congress. It was in January, 
1830, that Robert Young Hayne, gifted, eloquent, and 
charming, who acted as the mouthpiece of Calhoun, 
made the great speech for the Nullifiers in an argument 



1 86 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

that lasted the better part of two days. It was an 
effort thought by his own side to be unanswerable. 
Webster, roused by the peril of the Constitution from 
an apathy into which he had fallen on the death of 
his first wife, more than a year before, was to reply, but 
as Hayne proceeded even Webster's friends became 
uneasy. He had not even heard the first part of 
Hayne's speech. 

Men had made journeys three days' long to be pres- 
ent at the great debate, and the cloakroom and cor- 
ridors around the Senate chamber were blocked long 
before Webster appeared, serene and unterrified, care- 
fully dressed as always when he spoke before the Sen- 
ate, in the high white neckcloth, the buff vest, and blue 
coat with brass buttons that he affected. His very 
ease alarmed his friends. They knew he had had only 
one night's preparation. " Are you charged? " one of 
them asked anxiously as he entered. " Seven fingers," 
he replied in sportsman's phrase, meaning a double 
charge of powder then used in a gun. To another he 
showed his notes, scribbled on a bit of paper the size 
of an envelope, with the remark " There is Hayne's 
whole speech," and forthwith entered upon his argu- 
ment for judicial, not for personal or sectional, inter- 
pretation of the Constitution, ending with the impas- 
sioned plea for " liberty and union, now and forever, 
one and inseparable." 

It is said that it was from this speech that his am- 
bition mounted to the Presidency. Heretofore he had 
aspired only to be minister to England. But if Cal- 
houn, arch-apostle of States' Rights, was plotting to 
reach the office of President by weakening the fabric 
of the Union, it seemed but fair that Webster, its chief 
defender, should aspire to the same honor. 

President Jackson's attitude on Nullification had 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 187 

been and continued to be unknown, for in spite of 
his explosive and vehement nature he could maintain 
a discreet silence when he chose. Both sides were 
eager to find out, for his stand would of necessity have 
great influence on the result. A strict constructionist 
in theory, he was a law unto himself in practice, and 
no man could predict what he would do. Even the 
speeches of Hayne and Webster failed to draw from 
him a word of illuminating comment. 

The Nullifiers, who claimed Jefferson, reputed au- 
thor of the Virginia Resolutions, as their patron saint, 
arranged a banquet for the 13th of April, Jefferson's 
birthday, and invited the President and cabinet to at- 
tend. They accepted and the Nullifiers were filled 
with joy believing that this foreshadowed their in- 
tentions. An elaborate series of toasts, one for each 
State in the Union, was printed and laid at the plate of 
each guest. Several gentlemen on reading them re- 
fused to stay and drink to such sentiments. 

Jackson gave no sign. It was noticed that he wrote 
something on the back of his printed slip, then re- 
lapsed into an attitude of grim attention. The twenty- 
four set toasts were drunk with varying degrees of 
enthusiasm and sobriety. Then came a moment of 
eager silence, — the moment for which the dinner had 
been planned. It was customary at this point for 
guests to offer toasts without the formality of an in- 
vitation, but out of courtesy for the most distinguished 
guest, the toastmaster called upon the President to 
propose a sentiment. Jackson was ready. Rising to 
his slim, gaunt height, he said forcibly and distinctly : 

"Our Federal Union: it must be preserved," and 
sat down. 

It was a thunder-clap. Under and through the per- 
functory applause there was a very apparent and 



i88 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

palpable alarm. The toastmaster quickly called upon 
Calhoun to retrieve the day if that were possible. He 
also was ready, and gave " the Union, next to our 
liberties, the most dear. May we all remember that 
it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the 
States, and distributing equally the benefits and bur- 
dens of the Union." Then Van Buren, secretary of 
state, true to his self-imposed office of oil-pourer upon 
political waters, was upon his feet to propose " Mutual 
forbearance and reciprocal concessions. Through 
their agency the Union was established. The pa- 
triotic spirit from which they emanated will forever 
sustain it." After which followed seventy more vol- 
unteer toasts, unheeded and unremembered. 

Jackson's position was now clear, but it remained to 
be seen which side, if either, was prepared to back up 
words with deeds. South Carolina's attitude might 
be bluff; the President's might be bluster. The game 
of threats and preparation went on for two years 
longer. The governor of South Carolina gave notice 
that his State would not pay the obnoxious duties after 
February, 1833, and called upon the legislature for 
troops and guns. Jackson quietly ordered military 
and civil officers to be on the alert, but dismissed the 
matter with a casual reference in his annual mes- 
sage to Congress. The country was dum founded, and 
wondered if the old fighter had lost his nerve. But 
his Nullification proclamation to the people of South 
Carolina a few days later, declaring roundly that " to 
say that any State may at pleasure secede from the 
Union, is to say that the United States is not a nation " 
settled all doubts on that point. 

The matter never came to a trial of arms. The 
Nullifiers gave way, but not until after the passage by 
Congress of a Force Bill introduced at Jackson's re- 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 189 

qu.est, which gave him ample authority to meet the 
situation. This was denounced as being worse than 
the AHen and Sedition laws of 1799. Webster came 
to Jackson's aid and championed it. Calhoun ap- 
pealed to Clay for aid and received it. Everybody had 
an opinion; everybody expressed it, John Randolph, 
sick unto death, roused himself to journey through the 
counties of Virginia in his carriage, making speeches 
of loyalty to the Union, but warning against Jackson's 
pernicious doctrines. 

General Scott, a man of considerably more egotism 
than Jackson himself, allows it to be read between the 
lines of his autobiography' that the final happy issue 
was due principally to his tact, Jackson having ordered 
him to Giarleston a month before the Nullification 
proclamation was issued, ostensibly on a tour of in- 
spection. 

Ex-President Adams, though in Congress, held no 
communication whatever with his successor. He was 
a keen observer and saw instantly the true bearing of 
this visit, according to the General, He said when 
Scott called upon him to say good-by, " You are going 
south to watch the Nullifiers." Scott reminded him 
that it was time for his customary tour of inspection, 
Adams waved aside that fiction, " Yes," he repeated, 
" to watch the Nullifiers " ; adding, " Mr, Calhoun 
will be the first to give way. He will show the white 
feather." 

Calhoun meanwhile continued to preside over the 
Senate; ambition and sectional prejudice having so 
warped his mind that he saw no incongruity in his 
position. 

He did indeed resign the Vice-Presidency before the 
matter came to a final trial of strength in 1832, but 
only to accept the senatorial seat made vacant by 



190 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Hayne's election to the South CaroHna governorship. 
People turned curious eyes on him as on a man tread- 
ing a dangerous path that might lead to the scaffold, 
and when he presented himself to take the oath as 
Senator they listened wondering whether his voice 
would falter over the words pronounced by Washing- 
ton and all patriotic office-holders since Washington, 
— the vow to uphold the Constitution of the United 
States. But serenely sure of himself, Calhoun took 
the oath and took his seat, persuaded that he was in 
the right ; and continued to act as Senator, though in 
South Carolina medals bearing the inscription " John 
C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Con- 
federacy " were passing from hand to hand. 

Burr, shifty and unprincipled, denied the charge of 
treason, but died in ignominy, unbelieved and unfor- 
given. Calhoun, who made no denial, lived and died 
the idol of his section, holding office until the day of 
his death, and after death was accorded funeral honors 
more imposing than those given the President who died 
almost at the same time. It speaks volumes for his 
personal rectitude that this could be. 

The national capital, where these representative 
Americans gathered to make laws, resembled a town 
much more than it did when the elder Mrs. Adams 
circumspectly announced that she thought it had ** a 
beautiful situation." Yet it was very crude. The 
public buildings and scattered groups of private houses 
were still divided by magnificent distances of red-clay 
mud or dust, though more and more buildings were 
rising and more and more gashes, that it was trust- 
fully believed would become streets, were being cut 
through the green or gray woodlands and meadows. 
Commerce there was none, and shops were noticeable 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 191 

chiefly by their absence. Harriet Martineau com- 
plained that when she wanted to buy trimming for her 
bonnet she could find in th^ whole place " in the sea- 
son " only six pieces of ribbon from which to choose. 

Few people called Washington their home, but many 
came to it on personal or political business; and if 
crude it was very much alive. It might not boast, as 
New York did years before, that all known tongues 
were to be heard upon its streets, but the changing pro- 
cession of officials, bona fide residents, Negro slaves, 
and visitors gathered from far and near, — Southern- 
ers, Westerners, Northerners, Indians, traders, globe 
trotters, land speculators, gamblers, and adventurers 
generally, — gave it a " tone of carelessness and reck- 
lessness " that none of the Northern cities could equal, 
and an energy greater than that of any Southern town. 
James S. Buckingham, who came over from England 
in 1837 to instruct us on the " Scriptural and Clas- 
sical Regions of the East," said reprovingly that Wash- 
ington had " all the pretensions of a metropolis, with 
all the frivolity of a watering place." Amos Kendall, 
writing to his wife about the great show in dress and 
extravagance in entertaining, hoped that Jackson's ad- 
ministration would institute much needed reforms, and 
averred that if there was a spot on earth more given 
up to folly and corruption he did not wish to see it. 

Its standards had moved a long way from the rules 
of ultra simplicity laid down by Jefferson in 1801. 
But for that matter so had the standards of the whole 
country, since steamboats and even railroads had 
pushed their way into human life and set a pace out- 
distancing the old coach and four. French fashions 
that used to arrive by way of England, taking two 
years for the journey and becoming thoroughly An- 
glicized en route, now came direct and were not prized 



192 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

for their simplicity. Gambling was high and card 
playing common, and in Washington at least rooms 
were reserved for such ^diversions at most evening 
parties. Dinners of ceremony were formidable affairs, 
with menus that read like nightmares of culinary 
waste and show. 

" The big bugs here," wrote Kendall to his wife, 
" pay no attention to the sun or time of day in regu- 
lating their meals. They are above that. They in- 
vite you to dine with them at five o'clock, and the 
company gets together about six. Then they sit down, 
and it is eight, nine, or ten before dinner is over. At 
the 8th of January dinner which I was at the company 
did not leave the table until eleven o'clock, and then 
many of them could scarcely leave it at all. About 
1 20 persons drank 200 bottles of wine, and the dinner 
cost us only $5 apiece ! . . , Last night I dined at the 
house of the Postmaster General. . . . The party con- 
sisted of Mr. Calhoun, Vice-President; General Scott, 
and Colonel Neale of the army; Mr. Ingram, Colonel 
Johnson, and four or five others with half a dozen 
ladies. The table was highly ornamented and loaded 
with every kind of luxury. There was ham, beef 
cooked in various ways, mutton, turkey zvith bones and 
without, pork, chicken, partridges, canvas-back ducks, 
jellies, puddings, olives, grapes, raisins, custards, ap- 
ples, and a half dozen things I know no name for; 
Madeira wine, sherry, champagne, and two kinds the 
names of which I do not recollect. . . . Mr. McLean, 
who gave this entertainment, I suppose you know, is a 
Methodist. 

" You seem to fear that if I go to such dinners and 
parties I shall have to give them. Not at all. These 
are given by very rich men or public officers who have 
$6000 salary." 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 193 

The waltz, new and shocking dance, had been pub- 
licly introduced at a large ball in Washington when the 
elegant Baron Stackelburg revolved solemnly the 
length of the room with a big pair of dragoon spurs 
bound to his heels; always on the point of bringing 
destruction to the ladies' flounces, always dexterously 
avoiding them. A murmur of applause for his skill 
could not be withheld, but there was murmuring among 
the chaperons for another reason. Yet in itself the 
waltz was not new. The ex-Quakeress, Dolly Madi- 
son, had shamelessly taught it to a young friend in the 
White House twenty years before. But it was now a 
nightly occurrence, though it still required years of 
whirling and reversing on the part of its devotees to 
establish its blameless character. 

The difference between the old ways and the new 
was exactly the difference between this giddy dance 
and the statelier ones of former days, — a difference 
of pace and manner rather than intent. 

A few of the old regime lingered in drawing rooms 
as they did in legislative halls. That eager youth, 
Josiah Quincy, just come to Washington in 1826, was 
much impressed by a matron of Georgetown, a Blue 
Light Federalist, if there ever was one, who had named 
her three daughters America, Columbia, and Britan- 
nia, — the latter in rebuke to dalliance with French 
enthusiasm. She spoke of Jefferson's administration 
and those that succeeded it as " our present rulers," 
and for twenty-five years had lived in unrewarded 
hope that a Federal President would again be elected, 
so that she might emerge from her self-imposed re- 
tirement and take up the social leadership to which 
birth and talents entitled her. But the years passed, 
and her daughters could not be deprived of all inter- 
course with mankind, so she led them as circumspectly 



194 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

as possible through undesirable ballrooms frequented 
by the " present rulers." Young Quincy met Miss 
America and thought it very like meeting the Goddess 
of Liberty and trying to entertain her with ballroom 
gossip, — which indicates that Miss America " favored 
her ma." 

To that formidable lady and the patriots of her class, 
Federalism had been like a religion, as solemnly 
binding upon their consciences as the Nicene Creed, 
Free-thinking and democracy seemed to them identical, 
while " our present rulers " and particularly the young 
and ardent Whigs, appeared to look upon politics as 
nothing more than an exciting game to be carried on 
at all hours of the day and night. 

The white building on Capitol hill was the focus of 
social as well as political life. The Senate chamber 
was a small room, semi-circular in shape, with little 
accommodation for visitors. The House of Repre- 
sentatives, though larger, was scarcely better. In- 
deed, the spectators' gallery in the House was not a 
gallery at all, only a platform raised a foot or two 
above the floor, " which gave the honorable members 
an excellent opportunity of attending to the ladies who 
had come to listen to them." It was, moreover, so 
divided by pillars that it was hard to find a place from 
which the whole room could be seen at once and it 
was important therefore to know who was to speak. 
Everybody was partizan, everybody attended the de- 
bates, and the ladies, who were gallantly allowed upon 
the floor on occasions of special interest, swarmed 
everywhere, respecting only the speaker's chair and the 
desk of the reading clerk. 

Politics and society were the two absorbing occupa- 
tions of the town. Matrons of position pursued them 
both from ten in the morning, when they sat down in 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 195 

their drawing-rooms ready to receive callers, to the 
hour when the astral lamps were extinguished for the 
night. 

Even on Sundays the Capitol was the focus, for 
religious services in the House of Representatives drew 
the frivolous and fashionable as well as the devout. 
Visiting ministers preached the sermons and beauty 
lingered before wood fires in the lobby, absorbing 
spiritual grace and coquetting with politics in Sunday 
clothes. 

On week days there were political theater parties; 
for while theaters were only grudgingly patronized by 
the best society in more staid communities, in Wash- 
ington partizan hostesses gathered men of their own 
affiliations about them at the play, rejoicing in their 
numbers. They sent into the very halls of Congress 
to drum up recruits, congressmen and senators be- 
ing especially prized as guests, — though whether they 
were rated like the prisoners held for exchange in the 
War of 1812, one brigadier equaling thirty privates, 
and one major-general forty, contemporary records do 
not say. 

There were also interesting evenings when groups 
of lawmakers and officials, unaccompanied by women- 
kind, met in the private rooms of one of them to indulge 
in refreshment, intellectual and liquid. Sometimes the 
entertainment took the form of a debate that would 
have done credit to the floor of the Senate. Sometimes 
it was an improvised program of nonsense. Sometimes 
the company was moved to tears by the recitation of 
an actor they had applauded the night before with their 
fair hostesses. 

There was an ample supply of drink at these and 
more public gatherings. It was a custom of the time, 
based on the idea enshrined in a popular toast : " To 



196 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the bands of friendship, which always tighten when 
they are wet." At political dinners a dozen or more 
regular toasts, and " extras " mounting to near a hun- 
dred, were drunk. Indeed the use of spirits was much 
more common everywhere. *' Grog " in the army and 
navy; in the wheat field; toddy even in the slippered 
relaxation of the deacon at bedtime; was considered 
almost a matter of necessity. It was as much a part 
of the daily ration as flour or salt, and when workmen 
were hired was carefully nominated in the bond. 
Even horses were given their portion after a hard pull 
on the bad roads. Experience had not yet proved that 
in America's nerve-rasping air it was unsafe to follow 
a time-honored English custom. 

Almost all the public men drank, at times to excess. 
Both Clay and Webster were sinners in this respect, 
but drunk or sober, exercised their magnetic fascina- 
tion. " Clay is perfectly enchanting, an irresistible 
man," wrote Dickens. 

As for Webster, Josiah Ouincy tells an anecdote to 
show the " overwhelming effect which his mere pres- 
ence wrought upon men." He was accompanying 
Webster upon a journey. When they reached New 
Haven, Webster complained of feeling ill, and asked 
him to go with him in search of some brandy. They 
entered a barroom and the order was given. " The at- 
tendant, without looking at his customer, mechanically 
took a decanter from a shelf behind him and placed 
it near some glasses on the counter. Just as Webster 
was about to help himself, the bartender, happening to 
look up, started as if he had seen a spirit, and cried 
' Stop ! ' with great vehemence. He then took the 
decanter from Webster's hand, replaced it on the shelf 
whence it came, and disappeared beneath the counter. 
Rising from these depths he bore to the surface an 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 197 

old-fashioned black bottle, which he substituted for 
the decanter. Webster poured a small quantity into a 
glass, drank it off with great relish, and threw down 
half a dollar in payment. The barkeeper began to 
fumble in a drawer of silver, as if selecting some 
smaller pieces for change; whereupon Webster waved 
his hand with dignity and with rich authoritative 
tones, pronounced these words : * My good friend, let 
me offer you a piece of advice. Whenever you give 
that good brandy from under the counter, never take 
the trouble to make change.' As we turned to go out, 
the dealer in liquors placed one hand upon the bar, 
threw himself over it, and caught me by the arm. 
* Tell me who that man is ! ' he cried with genuine emo- 
tion. * He is Daniel Webster,' I answered. The man 
paused, as if to find words adequate to convey the im- 
pression made upon him, and then exclaimed in a fer- 
vent half whisper: * By Heaven, sir, that man should 
be President of the United States ! ' The adjuration 
was stronger than I have written it; but it was not 
uttered profanely, — it was simply the emphasis of an 
overpowering conviction. The incident was but a 
straw upon the current ; but it illustrates the command- 
ing magnetism of Webster. Without asking the rea- 
son, men once subjected to his spell were compelled 
to love, to honor, and (so some cynics would wish to 
add), to forgive him. No man of mark ever satis- 
fied the imagination so completely." 

Given the custom of drinking, the excessive number 
of toasts, and the hot political feelings of the day, it 
is small wonder that frequent quarrels and duels fol- 
lowed in their train. There had been remonstrance 
for years against both. More than one wave of tem- 
perance agitation had spread over the country, and 
every prominent duel since that of Hamilton and Burr 



198 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

had raised a storm of protest. But the custom was 
deeply rooted, and abstract condemnation of both prac- 
tices fell before anger and the supposed test of brav- 
ery. 

Theoretically the duel was a distinct step in advance 
from the pioneer way of a fight at the moment and 
on the spot with knives and fists. This more elegant 
and cold-blooded method gave time for reflection; but 
on the other hand it hedged the encounter about with 
formality and a false pride that went far to undo the 
good which should have resulted from the lapse of 
time between quarrel and combat for the cooling of 
anger. 

The South was more given to it than the North, 
and New Orleans was the focal point in the South, 
more duels having been fought in the passionate South- 
ern city in 1834 than there were days in the year, — 
fifteen of them on a single Sunday morning. As the 
practice fell into disrepute in the older communities, 
it was eagerly taken up in new ones. 

In Washington, where representatives of all sec- 
tions and all shades of political opinion came together, 
assault and battery found a place even in the halls of 
Congress. Houston of Texas, brave and loyal, and ut- 
terly dissolute in his personal habits, rushed upon and 
knocked down a colleague. He was reprimanded 
merely as a matter of form. Another congressman 
was shot at on the street. No official notice was taken 
of this incident, the honorable member making it 
understood with some pique that he could take care of 
himself. 

Out at Bladensburg, the suburb where the British 
had emphasized their power to burn our capital if they 
saw fit, there was a dueling ground that saw its full 
share of encounters, and, owing to the prominence of 



GIANTS IN CONGRESS 199 

the combatants, was better known perhaps than any 
in the country. To this dismal spot principals and 
seconds used to hurry in the fog of early morning to 
dissipate the wine fumes of the night before in sin- 
gle combat, which belonged by right to the period of 
Arthurian legend rather than to a nineteenth century 
republic. 

Fortunately most of the encounters were bloodless. 
Americans fired too straight and were at heart too 
free from malice to risk pointing their pistols directly 
at their adversaries. But there were many lamentable 
cases where, owing to ill-will or ill-luck, the outcome 
was not so fortunate. The diarist so often quoted tells 
of one week in March, 1820, that was to have been 
the gayest of the year, when the city was startled by 
the news that Commodore Decatur had fallen in a duel 
with Commodore Barron; and calamity following 
upon calamity, instead of receptions to Monroe's 
daughter, the White House bride, and a gay round 
that was to have marked the season's climax, funerals 
occurred in succession day after day. 

A congressional funeral was a very dismal affair. 
John Randolph shudderingly said that the fear of dy- 
ing in Washington, to be eulogized by men he de- 
spised and buried by the side of an enemy in the con- 
gressional cemetery, had haunted his whole con- 
gressional career, adding a new terror to death. A 
generous Government provided accommodation for 
dead lawmakers in a dreadful cemetery where they 
might either be buried or have monuments raised to 
their memory if their mortal remains were laid else- 
where. Even the preliminaries to interment in this 
place were grotesque. 

A liberal appropriation was made for the expense 
of such funerals. Both Houses adjourned, ostensibly 



200 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

to attend the ceremonies in the chamber which had 
been the scene of the member's labors. In point of 
fact few or many attended, according to his popu- 
larity. There might be nobody present, except the 
eulogist, the committee having the funeral in charge, 
and a handful of chance sightseers. The committee, 
and sometimes the physician of the deceased, wore as 
badges of official mourning long white linen scarves 
that were afterwards treasured by thrifty housewives 
and cut into the family supply of collars and cuffs. 
The chilly indifference of the obsequies was followed 
by a nondescript procession to the cemetery made up 
of all the hacks that could be hired in Washington, in 
whatsoever degree of dilapidation. These trundled 
along empty as often as not, but bound in some sort 
of unity of woe by broad bands of white that deco- 
rated the drivers' hats and descended half way down 
their variously colored backs. 

Such incongruities struck the stranger within our 
gates as odd and repulsive, but those most nearly af- 
fected accepted them apparently without seeing any- 
thing amiss, or at least without knowing that they 
could be altered. They were too busy living to be 
fastidious about details of dying. Nowhere was this 
more manifest than in the nation's capital, — a strag- 
gling, ill-kept Southern town with a characteristically 
representative, and what seemed to Europeans, a 
naively self-satisfied, society. But it had in it ele- 
ments of greatness, — largeness of intellect, loftiness 
of aim, and abounding new-world vitality. 



CHAPTER X 

AS OTHERS SAW US 

AT the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century the change in scale and standards of 
Hving was apparent even in the rural districts. 
Though the old coach and four, with its liveried serv- 
ants, had passed out of existence, more people rode 
in carriages than ever before. Cooking-stoves had 
displaced the old crane and kettle and Dutch oven; 
wherever the first one appeared, it drew as many visi- 
tors to the house as a funeral or a bride would have 
drawn. People recklessly ignited lucifer matches de- 
spite the cost, instead of making fire with the good 
old flint and steel or running to a neighbor's to bor- 
row a shovel of coals. Many new contrivances now 
added to the expense, and the comfort, of living; but 
in town and country alike there were conservatives 
who held out for the old ways of doing things, and 
particularly for the old scale of paying for them. No- 
where was this more true than in paying for public 
service. 

The only time Henry Clay had trouble with his Ken- 
tucky constituents was over a question of this kind, 
in 1816, when he voted to change the salary of con- 
gressmen to fifteen hundred dollars a year from the 
six dollars per diem then the rule. The impossibility 
of making both ends meet in Washington on that basis 
seemed to him and his fellow-congressmen a logical 

201 



202 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ground for the change; but to hard-working farmers 
fifteen hundred dollars for sitting in cushioned comfort 
a few months " with nothin' to do but vote " appeared 
ruinously extravagant. 

It was a far cry from the Methodist banquet de- 
scribed by Amos Kendall to the frugal, but substan- 
tial, table of the elder Adams, where for many years 
a " pudding " of boiled Indian meal had been served 
before the roast in the interest of economy, and hun- 
gry boys were deceitfully urged to partake, a prize of 
a second helping of meat being offered to the one who 
ate most pudding. 

But that was in New England, where careful man- 
agement was essential, the ground being so poor, ac- 
cording to Southern scoffers, that you had to plant 
a herring in every hill of corn in order to raise a crop 
at all. There had always been careless prodigality in 
the South under slavery. The banquets described in 
detail by the guests of General and Mrs. Washington 
were almost as lavish as those of President Jackson's 
day. And in the newly turned loam of the West corn 
grew rank, even while venison and wild turkeys strayed 
within rifle-shot of the cabin. 

The low price of meat and game in America, com- 
pared with foodstuffs of any kind in famine-gnawed 
Europe, astonished travelers of all classes. Immi- 
grants listened incredulously to farmers who assured 
them that it was the custom of even poor people to 
satisfy hunger three times a day. More wealthy so- 
journers noted not only that the woods were full of 
game, but that the waters of stream and inlet were cov- 
ered with wild fowl and their depths rich in " shell fish 
called clams " and other aquatic dainties. James Stu- 
art, who came over at this time, deemed it worthy 
of entry in his diary, as it certainly would be if a like 



AS OTHERS SAW US 203 

incident happened to-day, that he ordered a chop at a 
Baltimore hotel before setting out on his journey, 
" but canvas-back ducks are so abundant here that I 
found one of them prepared for my dinner without 
extra charge." 

Food and fire were two things that any one could 
have almost for the asking. In the forbidding winters 
of New England these essentials were provided for 
as in a siege. The woodpiles were of incredible size, 
and the supplies of " durable " vegetables, such as tur- 
nips, potatoes, and pumpkins, and they had few others, 
were stored indoors or buried deep in the earth to keep 
them from freezing. Housewives baked a prodigious 
number of pies and deliberately froze them for preser- 
vation, to be thawed out and presented to expectant 
households as needed. The size of this toothsome, if 
indigestible, store was a matter of family pride. One 
dear old lady whose memory stretched well back to- 
ward the beginning of the century told the writer, a 
flush still mounting to her cheeks at thought of it, how 
ashamed she felt one autumn nearly eighty years be- 
fore when a boastful little schoolmate asked how many 
pies her mother had baked for the winter, asserting 
in the same breath that at her house they had one hun- 
dred and fifteen ; and truth wrenched from the other a 
reluctant admission that her mother had made only 
ninety-seven. 

With food so plentiful and the more obvious crea- 
ture comforts within the reach of all, theft was rare. 
Even so, there was plenty of scheming and sharp prac- 
tice in pursuit of wealth. Mrs. Trollope, who sought 
our shores for the avowed purpose of gain, complained 
that every class was occupied in getting money and no 
class in spending it. According to her, Americans 
could never converse together without pronouncing the 



204 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

word " dollar." *' Such unity of purpose, such sym- 
pathy of feeling, can, I believe, be found nowhere else, 
except perhaps in an ant nest." 

The code of business ethics, though so narrow in 
some places, was strangely broad in others. Smart- 
ness and honesty appeared to be two separate and dis- 
tinct business qualities. In communities where boun- 
ties were still paid for the scalps of wolves, honesty 
required that a whole bona-fide scalp be produced for 
every bounty claimed. But smartness did not forbid 
deliberately breeding wolves for the market. That 
was merely a form of speculation, exciting and involv- 
ing a certain risk, as speculation must. 

Some of our visitors thought the country specula- 
tion mad. *' From Maine to the Red River," wrote 
Chevalier, " the whole country has become an immense 
Rue Quincampoix. ... I said that everything had be- 
come an object of speculation. I was mistaken. The 
American, essentially practical in his views, will never 
speculate in tulips, — even at New York ! " 

The American sense of equality, the way men en- 
gaged in the humblest occupation said " our Presi- 
dent " and " we did " so and so, identifying themselves 
with the governing power, struck foreigners as both 
humorous and amazing. Even before landing they 
were apt, if they crossed on an American vessel, to 
moralize on the fact that every member of the crew 
could read and write and converse intelligently upon 
the history, laws, and future prospects of his country. 
Every man, indeed, seemed to feel himself quite capa- 
ble, on demand, of leading the country through any 
crisis likely to arise; a state of mind that is perhaps 
the quintessence of Americanism, and that was shared, 
it will be remembered, by Lincoln, who told an Indiana 
regiment that competent men could be found in any 



AS OTHERS SAW US 205 

volunteer regiment in the service to fill all the important 
offices of government. 

Visitors who came to the United States before the 
days of steam were impressed with the number of 
swift little rowboats, manned by slim oarsmen with 
piercing eyes and keen, intelligent faces. They darted 
out to hail the newly arrived ship with a friendly 
" All 's well ? " followed by a volley of questions about 
the voyage and the latest news fron\ Europe, inter- 
spersed with laconic remarks on politics, the harvest, 
and the health of the city. After all these were dis- 
posed of, casually and as a side issue, would come the 
query whether any one wished to go ashore. They 
appeared to be conferring a favor instead of earning 
a living, and the monarchy-steeped soul of the trav- 
eler was torn from the moment of landing until his 
departure between admiration of this high-headed at- 
titude and resentment at the " coldness and indiffer- 
ence " with which they met his demands for personal 
service. 

No matter where he went, he met that same aggres- 
sive American equality. He soon learned that the 
word " servant " was not to be tampered with. It 
meant slave, and there was no such thing in the Free 
States. The Dutch word " boss " was tolerated in 
the place of " master," but the employee took orders 
only grudgingly from him and not at all from his mas- 
ter's paying guests. Feeing the waiter, if by chance 
there happened to be a waiter, was more apt to result 
in making him want to fight you than in improved 
service. Usually it was the innkeeper's daughter who 
waited at table and the innkeeper's son who put up 
the horses. They did not scruple to show that they 
did it as equals, not as inferiors, and once the service 
was rendered, hastened away to take their part in local 



2o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

social activities. " Help " was a euphonious subter- 
fuge whereby maid and man, if hired, saved their pride 
and pocketed their dollars for services more or less 
skilful, and less rather than more willingly given. 
Any attempt to run a household according to trans- 
atlantic traditions was foredoomed. Fanny Kemble 
wrote in 1835 that the task of managing six Repub- 
lican servants was " enough to make a Quaker kick 
his mother," a;i American expression she had' just 
learned and thought the acme of desperation. 

But let the traveler approach these same persons 
on a different plane, the maid-servant would set down 
her basket and walk a block out of her way to direct 
his steps. The hired man who could not be hired to 
black his monarchical boots would put a broad shoul- 
der to the wheel in more senses than one to help him 
out of trouble, and would discuss the present admin- 
istration or the prospects of the next one until the 
cows came home and chickens went to roost. And 
despite the reputation Americans had for pursuing the 
fleeting dollar, a civil " thank you " in a tone of real 
friendliness, not of condescension, was all they desired 
or expected in return. Equality was their luxury, and 
with true sporting spirit they were willing to pay for 
it. The great trouble was that once this friendly foot- 
ing was established, it endured. " I contradict an 
American at every word he says to show him that his 
conversation bores me: he instantly labors with fresh 
pertinacity to convince me; I preserve a dogged si- 
lence, and he thinks I am meditating deeply on the 
truths which he is uttering. . . . This man will never 
understand that he wearies me to extinction unless I 
tell him so; and the only way to get rid of him is to 
make him my enemy for life," wrote De Tocqueville. 

If while the maid-servant was escorting him to the 



AS OTHERS SAW US 207 

next turning the traveler cast apprehensive glances 
back toward her w^ell-filled basket waiting unprotected 
on the curb, she quieted his fears. Nobody would 
touch it, she assured him; and before he had been 
many days in the land he was recording in his diary 
that she was right, and that " very little attention is 
paid to locking up at night." Soon he accepted hon- 
esty in this sense as a matter of course, but he never 
could bring himself to regard the feeling of equality 
as other than a grotesque perversion of nature. The 
fact that here was a broad land where master and 
man, provided both were white, might change places 
in the dance of fortune over night was a source of 
never-ending wonder, 

" The servant of a lawyer or physician," wrote one 
such traveler, " perceives no material difference be- 
tween himself and his employer. . . . One brushes 
clothes, the other pleads a cause, or feels pulses or 
preaches or judges or governs, — and all for money. 
. . . Let him fall ill or have a lawsuit, and he will 
give his custom to his master, pay him like anybody 
else, and consider himself quoad as having changed 
characters with him." 

And this was no mere theory. " I spent an evening 
at the house of the president of Harvard University," 
wrote Miss Martineau. " The party was waited on at 
tea by a domestic of the president's who is also major 
of the horse. On cavalry days, when guests are 
invited to dine with the regiment, the major in his 
regimentals takes the head of the table, and has the 
president at his right hand. He plays the host as 
freely as if no other relation existed between them. 
The toasts being all transacted, he goes home, doffs 
his regimentals, and waits on the president's guests at 
tea." 



2o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Our towns, even the oldest, seemed very bright and 
new and flimsy to foreign visitors, our " improve- 
ments " ephemeral beyond belief. Although scourges 
of yellow fever had fostered a certain amount of com- 
munity spirit in street cleaning and sanitation, there 
was still much to be desired in these matters. Dick- 
ens in the forties noted that pigs worked as scaven- 
gers in the streets of New York, and years after his 
visit buzzards were doing the same friendly service 
in Southern towns. Statutes and ordinances regulat- 
ing such matters were opposed as an infringement of 
private rights, just as Franklin's desire to substitute 
modern police for the old watch that used to wander 
through the night and inform the wakeful about the 
weather, had been bitterly denounced as an " assault on 
liberty." 

New York had no waterpipes or cisterns. Men 
drove about the city, as they did in Paris, with huge 
water-butts, leaving every house its daily supply. 
Fires were numerous, as was to be expected, and were 
fought by volunteer fire companies. These were pop- 
ular social organizations service in which for seven 
years exempted their members from militia and jury 
duty. They ran through the streets at all hours of the 
day and night, dragging their inadequate apparatus 
after them, and shouting as though noise were as essen- 
tial in putting out the blaze as the Chinese seem to 
find it in driving away an eclipse. Omnibuses with 
doors held close by a strap in the hands of the driver 
were the new means of public conveyance. Passengers 
paid not to get in, but to alight, passing the fare 
through a hole in the roof, when the hold upon the 
strap would be relaxed and the door fly open. When 
they were crowded, the men, with American gallantry, 
" stood, or took the ladies on their knees." 



AS OTHERS SAW US 209 

The streets were gay with people and movement. 
Chimney-sweeps walked about singing their peculiar 
song, " always agreeably, sometimes melodiously, so 
as to awaken ideas of cheerfulness and content." 
Locksmiths and bell-hangers passed with coils of wire 
over their shoulders and bunches of keys in their 
hands. Gentlemen wore picturesque full capes of 
black broadcloth, with velvet collars and rich tassels. 
The women, handsomer than the men, who looked pale 
and careworn, were out in force, better dressed than 
seemed to the visitors quite justifiable. Signs and ad- 
vertisements suspended over the sidewalks added color, 
and the rapid pace of pedestrians and the clatter of 
carts driven at a gallop over the rough pavements kept 
up an air of hurry and bustle from Monday morning 
till Saturday night, when suddenly all signs of life van- 
ished, and nine tenths of the inhabitants might have 
been dead so great was the Sunday quiet that pre- 
vailed. 

But early Monday morning the bustle began anew, 
and everybody seemed to be trying to make up for 
lost time. The national desire to get ahead impressed 
all our European visitors. Restlessness and change 
not only with reason, but without it, appeared to them 
characteristic of our young and energetic people. 

Captain Basil Hall, who traveled in this country in 
1827-28, had the curiosity to visit the room in which 
the Declaration of Independence was signed. To his 
shocked surprise he found it much altered, presumably 
for the worse. " The unpleasant truth seems to be," 
he commented, " that nothing whatever is venerated 
in America merely on account of its age, or, indeed, 
on any other account. . . . The Turks who pounded 
the frieze of the Parthenon into mortar had an ob- 
ject in view; but I never could hear that the Amer- 



2IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

icans had an equally good excuse for dismembering 
their Hall of Independence." 

De Tocqueville, more sympathetic, summed it up 
thus: 

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in 
constant motion, and every movement seems an improve- 
ment. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected 
with the idea of amelioration. . . . This perpetual change . . . 
keeps the minds of the citizens in a perpetual state of feverish 
agitation which admirably invigorates their exertion . . . The 
whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, 
a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. 

Those who penetrated to the " far West " of Cincin- 
nati were astonished to find life moving at an even ac- 
celerated pace, and to discover there hotels rivaling 
those of New York and a society resembling that of 
Boston. Cincinnati was perhaps the most progressive 
of the Western cities, and was made up largely of 
former residents of New England. Scattered here 
and there over our vast country were such unexpected 
oases of civilization. There were also marvels of nat- 
ural scenery like Niagara, but dividing them were what 
appeared to the denizens of closely populated Europe 
endless stretches of barren desolation, tangled wood- 
land, and ill-cultivated fields. To go from town to 
town one had to travel for days and nights in boats or 
cars dangerously propelled by steam, or over bad roads 
by stages that stopped at impossible inns. 

Every town had its characteristics that struck for- 
eigners as oddly provincial. " In Boston smoking is 
forbidden in the streets," wrote Ampere. " You see 
them beating carpets in the public parks of Boston, as 
they dry clothes in those of New York. The people 
is at home, — doing its housekeeping." 

It did its housekeeping very openly, its business 



AS OTHERS SAW US 211 

feverishly, its praying decorously, and went about its 
politics with whole-hearted enthusiasm. Everywhere, 
from the halls of Congress to the cabin of the pioneer, 
where two or three were gathered together, you could 
hear discussions of politics, local and national. But 
the attitude of this energetic and warm-blooded young 
people toward relaxation puzzled Europeans even 
more. It was as though the whole nation had entered 
into a conspiracy to stifle a natural and perfectly legiti- 
mate longing, which it considered something to be 
ashamed of and not quite nice, if not actually sinful. 
" Even their drams they take standing ! " was the com- 
ment of one on our haste and strange ways. 

As for art and music and acting, they seemed to be 
waging an uphill battle against the ingrained Puritan 
notion that beauty must inevitably be an ally of the 
devil. They existed only on sufferance, and yet ap- 
pealed to an ineradicable instinct. In this new coun- 
try a civilization rich in old culture had been grafted 
upon the wilderness, but neither Puritan nor Cavalier 
could bring much worldly gear with him, and distrust 
of art as beguiling and morally dangerous added to the 
difficulty of transplanting the decorative features of 
life. A few pieces of furniture, a few books, a few 
cherished keepsakes and family miniatures found lodg- 
ment in the seaboard settlements, and became, for the 
women especially, precious and visible links with the 
old life across the sea. The little art we had was ex- 
cused by sentiment. Pictures merely as art hardly ex- 
isted, and statues, it will be remembered, remained 
" graven images " even to Whittier, who died not so 
very long ago. 

Love of beauty, however, had been too strong for re- 
ligious scruple or the restraining arm of circumstance. 
Little girls were encouraged to work their samplers 



212 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and blend colors and contrive designs under the pre- 
tense of learning to make incredibly small, neat 
stitches. Maidens embroidered their romance into 
their wedding-clothes, and young mothers their hopes 
into a christening- robe. A box of precious hard cakes 
of water-color paints with the glossiest of Bristol- 
board and the smallest of brushes gave scope to family 
affection and love of craft in self-taught attempts at 
portraiture or flower-painting of artless sincerity. 
Shuttles were constrained to fly in patterns through 
looms, and after garments had served long and faith- 
fully, in a descending scale of evolution from father's 
Sunday best to the youngest Joseph's much-patched 
coat, they found their apotheosis in a braided rug of 
many colors. 

But manifestations of this very humble and domes- 
tic character were not likely to impress Europeans fresh 
from their galleries and art treasures. They found 
few works of art in our public buildings, and almost 
nothing to indicate that we knew which of those were 
good and which were bad. We had our group of 
painters in Revolutionary times who painted in the 
delightful manner of their English contemporaries, 
but whose works, particularly their portraits, were 
prized more for historical value than from any sense of 
their worth as art. We had developed a few artists 
since then whose canvases were interesting, psycholog- 
ically at least; and lately some young men had discov- 
ered the glory of American landscape, and were cele- 
brating it in the loving, if laborious, manner of the 
Hudson River school, trying to paint both sides of 
every leaf in a country full of red and yellow trees. 

A few American sculptors had made their appear- 
ance, one in a watchmaker's shop out in Cincinnati, an- 



AS OTHERS SAW US 213 

other in the family of a justice of the Supreme Court 
of the United States. But graven images were even 
harder than pictures to reconcile with the lingering 
Puritan standard of virtue, and the sculptors lived, 
when they could, abroad. 

Music we liked in theory. Young ladies were taught 
to play a little on the piano, and those who could sang 
a little. " But ... as to expression," wrote a visit- 
ing Frenchman, " our ladies are too chaste to include 
that in their singing; so that the finest pieces assume 
in their mouths a tone of icy virginity." Oratorio so- 
cieties reflected the more mature and serious musical 
taste of the day. Concerts were rare, and if a concert 
singer happened also to be an actress, halls and school 
auditoriums in the smaller towns might be closed to 
her; and the chances were that if she found a place in 
which to sing, her audience would dwindle because of 
her profession. 

Perhaps three fourths of the people of the United 
States disapproved of actors and acting. Surely the 
evil fruit of the tree of knowledge was self -conscious- 
ness. Although religious emotion had found vent in 
dramatic movement since the acting out of the first 
dawn myth, after Protestant " conviction of sin " 
came into fashion, body and soul alike were forced into 
straight-jackets of conventional behavior. Those who 
claimed special knowledge of the will of Heaven put 
a ban upon harp and psaltery and dancing before the 
Lord or elsewhere. No instrument more melodious 
than a tuning-fork was allowed to invade the meeting- 
house, and no actions more enlivening than head-shak- 
ings to punctuate the long sermon. Yet the bodily 
contortions and broken ejaculations of our Western 
camp-meetings, and the singing or intoning that form 



214 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

part of almost every ritual under the sun, testify how 
impossible it is to sever this relationship between mus- 
cles and emotion. 

Commercialism was not slow to appropriate to its 
own baser use the instinct toward laughter and leap- 
ing and tears so unwisely disowned by the church. 
Though all the solemnity of Puritan denunciation was 
vented upon the stage, it managed to keep a foothold, 
and back in the days when Congress met in Philadel- 
phia a theater of that city painted triumphantly above 
its stage the legend, '' The Eagle suffers little birds 
to sing." 

Disapproval was strongest in the middle classes, 
from which the greater part of our population was re- 
cruited. The " gentry " of colonial times went to the 
play, as did the more liberal of our later citizens, and 
all the early Presidents attended the theater, to see and 
to be seen as well as for relaxation ; but the large ma- 
jority thought it a questionable proceeding at best. It 
resolved itself finally into a matter of denomination. 
Catholics and Episcopalians attended without scruple. 
Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, if they went 
occasionally, did so with the feeling that they were 
braving public opinion and tempting the wrath of 
Heaven. Quakers never set foot inside a playhouse. 

A fatal theater fire in Richmond on the day after 
Christmas, i8i i, in which seventy perished, was looked 
upon as a merited judgment. A church was built 
upon the spot, and for seven years no other playhouse 
was opened in the town. In Massachusetts theatrical 
performances were forbidden for many years, and as 
late as 1830 their houses were dark and deserted on 
Saturday nights. In New York, about 181 5, a commit- 
tee " of substantial citizens " gathering money for the 
relief of the poor refused a gift of a hundred dollars 



AS OTHERS SAW US 215 

because it was offered them by the manager of a 
theater. 

The century was well advanced before a native ac- 
tor of prominence appeared, though every city had its 
stock company to support the stars, usually natives of 
Ireland or England, who followed erratic orbits from 
town to town as business dictated. In the early days 
manners were free and easy. Men kept on their hats 
in the boxes and took off their coats in the pit if so 
inclined. One hundred years ago box seats cost a dol- 
lar each, those in the pit fifty and seventy-five cents. 
Servants were sent to hold them until the patrons ar- 
rived, and theater advertisements announced that serv- 
ants positively could not remain during the perform- 
ance. At that time, too, some of the larger theaters 
set aside proscenium-boxes for the use of women who 
had no reputation to lose, who thus sat in full view of 
the house, a spectacle that did much to foster preju- 
dice and to explain the statement made by more than 
one traveler that " ladies of the first fashion do not go 
often to the theater," for though the custom died early, 
the prejudice remained. 

Unless some well-known star was playing, the per- 
formance left much to be desired. " Dans ce pays 
lointain ou on fait des machines que I'Europe admire, 
on ne sait pas faire des vaudeville," wrote Ampere. 
When the Duke of Saxe- Weimar saw " William Tell " 
performed at the Park Theater in New York he had 
some difficulty in recognizing his old friend, the play 
had been so thoroughly " dressed in English taste," 
with plenty of battles ; and whenever liberty was men- 
tioned, the shirt-sleeved pit applauded by cries and 
vigorous stamping of feet. 

Good arguments, moral, social, and artistic, could 
be and were urged against attending the play. Only 



2i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

in ungodly New Orleans did the institution find un- 
qualified support. There not only drama, but opera, 
which for some reason seemed wickeder than mere act- 
ing, flourished. Perhaps the blacker guilt of opera 
is to be explained by the fact that it supplements act- 
ing with the singing that even rigid Puritanism could 
not banish from the sanctuary, and thereby it adds in- 
sult to iniquity. New Orleans supported its annual 
season of French opera, and before 1815 every city 
of any size had experienced the seductive combina- 
tion of sound, motion, and emotion, at least in English 
translation. But it was too exotic to find favor. 
About 1830, when New York supported no fewer than 
five theaters, Achille Murat wrote down the exag- 
gerated account that had been given him of the night 
upon which an opera with a corps de ballet dawned on 
New York. The sight of the dancers in their short 
skirts was startling enough, but at the very first pirou- 
ette, when the filmy things, weighted with lead at their 
edges, began to expand and mount rapidly heavenward, 
half the audience fled in alarm, while the rest rocked 
and sobbed with mirth, seeing no beauty, only the gro- 
tesque, in these strange gyrations. 

Such exhibitions grew more shocking in retrospect 
than in actual experience. " The ascetic practice of 
taking care of one another's morals has gone to such 
length in Boston as to excite the frequent satire of 
some of its wisest citizens," wrote Miss Martineau. 
" When there was talk of attempting to set up Italian 
opera there, a gentleman observed that it would never 
do ; people would be afraid of the very name. * Oh,' 
said another, * call it lectures on music, with illustra- 
tions, and everybody will come.' " 

The satire was biting, but not undeserved, for the 
instinctive craving for amusement without loss of pres- 




DANIEL WEBSTER 



AS OTHERS SAW US 217 

tige in this world or the next tempted the ingenious 
Yankee mind to amazing invention and subterfuge. 
The law against play-acting by professionals, which 
closed all the theaters of Connecticut just before the 
year 1800, was evaded by calling their performances 
" moral lectures." Similar efforts by amateurs and 
school-children were called " exhibitions," a name to 
which they were undoubtedly entitled. Circuses were 
anathema, but menageries, being educational, were ap- 
proved by the authorities, if not always by stern par- 
ents. " I remember running away from home to see 
the animals when I was a little chap of eight," an 
aged gentleman told the writer. He " made a safe 
get-away," as his graceless grandson would express it, 
and had almost reached the magic canvas circle wherein 
hyenas raged and lions roared when he looked back 
and saw the family horse bringing retribution after 
him. " My father and mother in the one-horse shay 
were coming to catch me. I can see that chaise climb- 
ing the hill now." " Oh, yes, I was caught," he added 
with a satisfaction that showed how far he had trav- 
eled from the persecuted small citizen who was forced 
to improve his mind when the process was painful, and 
disgraced for trying to do the very same thing the min- 
ute it became alluring. 

Marvels in the way of mechanical devices, real or 
faked, and " museums " of more or less doubtful at- 
tractions, fed the insatiable desire for amusement and 
novelty. " The people have a most extraordinary pas- 
sion for wax figures," wrote Mrs. Trollope about the 
inhabitants of Cincinnati. " Hell," an early mechan- 
ical work by Hiram Powers, made in the transition 
days from his labors as a watchmaker to his career 
as a sculptor, was one exciting attraction of that 
Western Athens. An enterprising Swede bought it, 



2i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and connected it with an electric battery, then some- 
thing of a novelty in itself, and brought up a large 
family of children on the proceeds of showing the 
timid and curious " how things go in hell," to the ac- 
companiment of electric shocks and realistic thunder 
and lightning. 

Redheffer's Perpetual-Motion Machine, which was 
raided by Fulton in his wrath and forced to yield up 
its secret of a pathetic old man turning a crank; The 
Automaton Chess-player; the Automaton Trumpeter; 
and panoramas, far-off prophecies of to-day's movies, 
were famous drawing-cards in their day. And to 
Niblo's Garden in New York came the delightful Sig- 
nor Blitz, who combined philanthropy with his fool- 
ery, and sometimes used his wizard tricks to reform 
the erring and comfort the distressed. 

But the man who knew best how to turn American 
curiosity into dollars, past master in the art of ad- 
vertisement, something of a fraud, and withal a very 
real benefactor to his fellows, was that shrewd Yan- 
kee peddler of Connecticut, Phineas T. Barnum. 
After the versatile manner of his countrymen, he was 
legislator and author, mayor and temperance lecturer, 
as well as king of showmen. Acting on his theory 
that " the public is a very strange animal," he catered 
to it in very strange ways : exhibited a " Feejee mer- 
maid " of doubtful authenticity to wondering New 
Yorkers; got possession for a single day of the boats 
plying to the Elysian Fields at Hoboken, and arranged 
the forerunner of Wild West shows, a buffalo-hunt, 
which was not much of a performance, but a great 
success in harvesting ferry-tolls to the number of 
" forty-eight thousand sixpences." He imagined more 
ways of flamboyant advertising than had ever been 
invented, and he did one thing for which much more 



AS OTHERS SAW US 219 

could be forgiven him, — he brought Jenny Lind to 
this country. 

She was comparatively unknown in America when 
he imported her charming personality and voice. His 
advertising made of her tour a triumph and a delight 
never again equaled during the lifetime of those who 
heard her, and that has now passed into tradition as a 
standard of perfection. She had sung in opera, but 
she appeared here in concert. That was in itself a 
triumph of business shrewdness, reducing at once the 
expense and the opposition, Barnum offered a prize 
of two hundred dollars for an ode in her honor, which 
was won by a young man named Bayard Taylor. 
When her ship was nearing port he erected triumphal 
arches on the wharf. Guns announced her arrival off 
Sandy Hook, and he ostentatiously climbed aboard 
the Atlantic to welcome her "with a choice bouquet 
stuck in the bosom of his white vest." Another man, 
ostensibly Barnum's business rival, was already at her 
side, presenting her with a bouquet three times as big; 
but he may have been part of the advertising scheme 
in disguise. At any rate, she smiled upon Barnum, 
and he mounted the box of her carriage, white waist- 
coat and all, and drove off with her in triumph through 
the crowd, a move which his autobiography confesses 
was a detail of his well-thought-out plan. 

The newspaper account of her arrival was as pic- 
turesque as it could be made, and the auctioning of 
seats for her first concert proved as exciting as a flurry 
on the stock-exchange. Three thousand people were 
present, and bids rose by leaps and bounds until the 
first seat was awarded to a hatter, with a talent for 
advertising equal to Barnum's own, for the modest 
sum of two hundred and twenty-five dollars. 

Great preparations were made for the opening con- 



220 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

cert, which took place, as did the auction, in Castle 
Garden. 

A reporter could find only one thing to criticize, — 
a large motto, " Welcome, Sweet Warbler," done in 
flowers that stared Jenny Lind in the face as she came 
out in her simple white dress to sing " Casta Diva." 
The great place was filled to the last seat, but only one 
eighth of the audience, the reporter estimated, were 
ladies. " They must stay at home, it seems, when the 
tickets are high." The gentle modesty of the singer's 
bearing and the wonder of her pure, rich voice all of 
us know, though not one of us has heard it. " Jenny 
Lind was the very music, for the time being," wrote 
the enthusiastic reporter. Low of stature and " rather 
more robust " than her portraits indicated, with a face 
that would have been plain had not dignity and kindli- 
ness made it beautiful, she sang as simply as a child, 
and stood as simply to receive the applause that broke 
in torrents when she finished. At the end of the con- 
cert an even greater burst of enthusiasm greeted Bar- 
num's dramatic announcement that she would give her 
share of the proceeds of the entertainment, consider- 
ably more than $10,000, to local charity. 

It must have been a wonderful evening, but more 
wonderful, emotionally and artistically, was a night 
soon after, described to the writer by one of the many 
ladies who " must stay at home when the tickets are 
high." She was at her hotel a block or so from the 
one that flew the great flag of Sweden and Norway in 
honor of Jenny Lind. Sitting beside her open window 
and thinking about the treat she had missed, this little 
lady heard the music of a band not quite in tune come 
to serenade the songstress, heard the burst of applause 
that greeted her when she appeared upon her balcony, 
and then in a hush that seemed to still the noises of the 



AS OTHERS SAW US 221 

whole city, heard that clear, incomparable voice rising 
above the housetops and filling the darkness with the 
notes of " Home, Sweet Home." 

We were not musical ; the word " artistic " was not 
in our vocabulary, or, if there, was a synonym for ques- 
tionable pleasures rather than for beauty ; but we were 
sentimental and big-hearted and genuine, and we could 
go wild over this genuine woman with her golden voice, 
as we did over Lafayette when he returned to us after 
an absence of fifty years. 

We could and often did appear callous and alto- 
gether crude to our visitors. We were boastful, but 
not about the things that seemed to them to redound 
to our credit. We were courteous, but we were rarely 
polite. We were practical, yet we were forever dream- 
ing dreams and seeing visions of great power and 
great possessions and greater luck. And we were 
maddeningly self-satisfied. 

A visit to our shores was like seeing a familiar face 
in a glass that slightly distorts the features ; it was the 
same, with a disturbing difference. We had new 
standards of value for everything, — for words as well 
as for deeds and things. We used the same speech, 
yet had a radically different vocabulary. Americans 
" fixed " everything from an enemy to a cut finger or 
a baby's broken doll, not forgetting a political nomina- 
tion; and after all there was nothing really fixed in 
their changing, hurrying life save a colossal belief in 
their country and their future. 

In reading what visiting foreigners wrote about us 
during those early days the sum of their remarks seems 
to be that America was like olives, a matter of personal 
taste. People liked or disliked us rather vigorously. 
But whether they liked us or not, our vital young civi- 
lization interested them enormously. 



CHAPTER XI 

ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 

MEASURING rods and mathematics to the 
contrary notwithstanding, the second period 
of our national Hfe was to be one of contrac-r 
tion. Even at the moment that Jefferson was con- 
summating his purchase of Louisiana, the " dragon's 
teeth " Gouverneur Morris demanded, had been sown. 
Although Jefferson's purchase added a third to the na- 
tional domain, and before leaving office Monroe bought 
Florida, thereby turning over to his successor a coun- 
try twice the size of the one Washington governed; 
and although we have since reached out to annex 
glaciers and tropic islands across the sea, all this ex- 
pansion has been more than offset by new inventions 
in the way of annihilating space. The country was 
larger at the beginning of the nineteenth century than 
it ever has been since. 

Early in the fifties of that century Fredrika Bremer 
attended " a grand humorous procession " near Boston. 
It would now be called by a shorter and more imposing 
name, a pageant. " Among the historical tableaux 
of the procession was a series which exhibited the prog- 
ress made in the means of communication within the 
last fifty years. First came a horseman riding slowly 
along, with the following inscription : ' From Salem 
to Boston in 48 hours' time/ Then came an old heavy 
diligence with the same inscription, * From Salem to 
Boston in 12 hours' time.' After these came a rail- 

222 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 223 

way train inscribed * From Salem to Boston in half an 
hour's time.' And lastly an iron wire of the electric 
telegraph inscribed, ' From Salem to Boston in no time 
at all.' " 

This sums up in few words the process of contrac- 
tion just hinted at, but it may be interesting and worth 
while to follow it a little more in detail. The wilder- 
ness had not been entirely " trackless " at the first com- 
ing of Europeans. Buffaloes and elk were excellent 
engineers, and the Indians widened and improved these 
first natural highways. Indeed some of them are fol- 
lowed to this day by railroads, no better routes having 
been found. There were other trails, too, for which 
red men alone were responsible, so ancient that the 
rocks had been hollowed deep by the tread of moc- 
casined feet. 

Gradually these were widened until rough roads had 
been chopped through the forest, leaving stumps stand- 
ing, and paying only such small heed to grades and 
bogs as was absolutely necessary. Over such roads 
freight was hauled with infinite labor to man and ox 
in clumsy wagons with huge, solid wooden wheels, 
each a single round cut from some giant tree. Then 
miles of " corduroy road " were built by laying tree- 
trunks side by side, over which wheels and travelers 
rattled and bumped with painfully regular irregularity, 
well suggested in the movement of Tom Moore's lam- 
poon on the highways of old Virginia: 

Ruts and ridges 

And Bridges 

Made of planks 

In open ranks 

Like old women's teeth — 

Except that these corduroy roads were not even plank, 
but unhewn, unmitigated tree-trunks, without the soft- 



224 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ening intervention of tools or even a superficial cover- 
ing of dirt. 

Before the time of the Revolution, stage routes were 
well established in the more densely settled regions, 
but as each colony, in fact each community, attended 
to the keeping up of its own highways, the roads ex- 
hibited a varying scale of discomfort from bad to very 
worst, as they wound from settlement to settlement. 
They increased in number but hardly in quality with 
years and extending settlement. As late as 1834 Har- 
riet Martineau commented on the number of broken 
windows she saw on her travels and explained it thus : 

" Persons who happen to live near a canal or other 
quiet watery road have baskets of glass of varying 
sizes sent to them from the towns and glaze their own 
windows. But there is no bringing glass over a cordu- 
roy, or mud, or rough limestone road." 

The rivers were the chief means of reaching the 
new Western regions during the Revolution and even 
later, there being no roads worthy the name beyond 
Pittsburg. But though pioneers might build flatboats 
to carry themselves and their scanty belongings down 
the Ohio into the Mississippi, and persons of wealth 
float in luxury over the same rivers, as did Burr in his 
Western journeys of evil omen; all who returned from 
West to East had to rely on the willing, straining 
muscles of horses to overcome the upward grade. 

As early as 1803, when Ohio became a State, a cer- 
tain share of the money from the sale of government 
lands within its limits was set aside to build a road 
connecting the Ohio River with the Eastern States. 
This was hotly contested in Congress, on the ground 
that it was not only unconstitutional but ruinously ex- 
travagant for the general Government to undertake the 
building of post roads. But necessity overcame much 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 225 

oratory and during the session of 1805-6 it was de- 
cided that the road should be laid out. The same Con- 
gress passed the bill establishing a Coast Survey, — 
likewise in the interest of travel, — two measures di- 
rectly at odds with Jefferson's State Rights theories, 
but which his good sense championed and his signature 
made laws. 

Work upon the Cumberland Road, as this first enter- 
prise of the kind undertaken by the National Govern- 
ment was called, began soon after. It started at the 
town of Cumberland, Maryland, and though Congress 
continued to wrangle about its constitutionality, it 
pushed on across southwestern Pennsylvania and 
reached the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia, 
by the year 181 8. From there it continued westward 
under the name of the National Road, intent on reach- 
ing the uttermost verge of civilization, an ambition 
thwarted only because railroads overtook it and got 
there first. 

Meantime Congress, still a prey to qualms, evolved 
the theory that while the general Government had a 
right under the Constitution to build roads through 
" sovereign " States, it had no right to keep them in 
repair after they were built; and acting on this theory 
turned the Cumberland road over in 1831 to the tender 
mercies of the States whose territory it crossed. 
Thereafter citizens of indifferent industry " worked 
out " their road taxes upon it with lamentable results. 

The roadbed was of the kind known as Macadam 
where for their sins, weary pilgrims, four-footed and 
human, are condemned to tread upon angular frag- 
ments of stone, pressing them into a pathway that be- 
comes imperceptibly less torturing for each succeeding 
victim. When well made it is very good, but the haste 
of a young country and the carelessness of the workers 



226 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

seldom allowed it to be well made. Often only a 
single layer of stone was spread over yielding loam. 
Then it grew worse with every footfall. Great holes 
were speedily worn, repairs became necessary even be- 
fore the road was completed, and the torture continued 
in a never-ending round. 

Business shrewdness came to the rescue and offered 
turnpike companies as a remedy. These took up the 
work under contract and entered on a cheerful career 
of monopoly, charging what tolls they pleased, and 
making what repairs they saw fit. The system spread 
to other roads, and for half a century remained the 
accepted American mode of dealing with the problem 
of public highways. 

Rates of toll were supposed to bear some relation to 
the amount of damage done; so hogs were charged 
more than sheep and cattle more than either. Car- 
riages and wagons with narrow tires had to pay heavier 
toll than wagons whose broad and heavy wheels acted 
as rollers. If the tires were only broad enough, — the 
number of inches was carefully specified at six or eight, 
— they might pass free. The road also maintained a 
free list which varied according to time and place, but 
included persons, vehicles, and animals going to or 
returning from church, or their usual places of busi- 
ness, from mill or market in their home counties, 
or when attending musters, funerals, or elections. 
School children, ministers, and United States soldiers 
were passed free, and all military stores of the Gov- 
ernment, and the United States mails of course. It 
seems a miracle that anything remained to be taxed. 
Yet the public looked upon the tolls as a burden and 
many and odd were the devices to evade payment. 
" Shun Pike " in Pennsylvania between Watertown 
and Erie embalmed for a long time in its name local 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 227 

efforts in this line, which went to the extent of build- 
ing a whole new road around an objectionable toll- 
gate. 

The great increase in manufactures after the War of 
1 8 12 developed the need for moving goods from place 
to place and gave further impetus to road building. 
" Internal improvements " became a leading issue in 
politics. Localities went wild over schemes to better 
their means of reaching the outside world. Canals 
and even a new-fangled contrivance called a railroad 
were discussed, though the chief reliance was still upon 
the roads. Freight and passenger traffic were already 
as distinct and separate as they now are upon railroads, 
freight then exceeding the other as it does to-day. 
The old carts with solid wheels had disappeared. 
Goods were transported in " Conestoga " wagons 
whose long bodies, gay with red and blue paint, curved 
upward at each end toward their white canvas covers. 
Over the harness was a thin iron arch hung with bells, 
the number of which showed the prowess of the team, 
it being the custom in certain localities when a wagon 
got stalled for the team coming to the rescue to carry 
off the bells of the luckless one in triumph. The men 
in charge of these teams were hardy and rough in 
speech and act; almost a race by themselves who har- 
bored a grudge against travelers by chaise and stage- 
coach, and were likely to do them a mischievous turn. 
Their wagon houses were dotted along the road with 
greater frequency than travelers' inns, for the good 
reason that heavy loads moved slowly, even measured 
by the slow schedules of that day. These teamsters' 
houses might be small but they invariably contained 
two essentials, a capacious fireplace and a highly " prac- 
ticable " bar. The enclosures about them were ample, 
presenting a most picturesque sight at nightfall, when 



228 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the men camped beside their horses and Ht their fires 
to cook the evening meal. 

By the time John Quincy Adams became President, 
the passenger coach on well established stage lines 
had become a thing of elegance, though somewhat re- 
sembling a gigantic hearse, into which travelers climbed 
over the backs of the horses. Such coaches were given 
fancy names like our sleeping cars, and " Jewess," 
" Ivanhoe," and " Loch Lomond " showed distinctly 
the influence of Walter Scott. Advertisements of 
their luxury and speed never failed to mention the good 
condition of the horses and to dilate upon the sobriety 
of the drivers, " which as everybody knows is the most 
difficult and dangerous part of the running of stages." 
The horses were usually four and the number of pas- 
sengers eleven, nine inside and two seated with the 
abstemious driver. Luggage took the shape of diminu- 
tive hair-covered trunks, brass studded and built for 
hard usage, which were swung on behind; and each 
lady was, moreover, allowed her bandbox that accom- 
panied her inside, to the great inconvenience of all 
concerned. But this was submitted to with the in- 
variable good humor that Europeans found so charac- 
teristic of American travelers. 

The departure of the stage was always at a deplor- 
ably early hour in the morning, no matter what the 
length of the journey, — a phenomenon of travel paral- 
leled in England to-day (though immensely improved 
upon) in the way the destination is invariably reached 
in time for tea. 

The difference between good stage lines and bad was 
wide indeed. At the one extreme was the lively, if 
dusty, procession of nine or more coaches, whirling its 
loads to boats upon the nearest river, to be delivered 
in turn to nine pther coaches that carried them to other 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 229 

boats, and so on all the way from New York to Wash- 
ington where they brought up at " Gadsby's," an inn 
of national reputation "on the Avenue west of 21st 
Street, beyond the ' Seven buildings.' " Here long 
dinner tables awaited the hungry travelers, and an army 
of " likely " colored waiters responded with military 
precision to the commands of the stout little host. 
" Re-move covers ! " he would cry, and they stepped 
forward as one man, lifted them, and stepped back 
again, wheeled to face their master and awaited the 
next signal; walked away, keeping step, deposited the 
covers, and returned to serve the guests. 

That was the luxury of travel. At the other ex- 
treme were days and nights of weary rolling and pom- 
meling over roads " marked out rather than made," 
through barren Southern pine lands, or in that rice 
country nearer the coast, " a sort of hasty pudding of 
amphibious elements " where " the river wants strain- 
ing and the land draining to make either properly wet 
or dry," In such lonely regions meeting another 
stage-coach was like the meeting of ships at sea ; each 
clamorously demanding news from the region the other 
had left, travelers from the South asking about the 
doings of Congress and those from the North about 
their friends in Charleston or the latest packet from 
Europe. On parting each passed on through more 
pine barrens or over a purgatory of corduroy road 
across bogs and bayous, until they halted to " water 
the horses, and brandy the gentlemen " at some ill- 
constructed hostelry such as the Duke of Saxe- Weimar 
would have described politely but adequately as " rather 
transparent." Here the food was apt to be of a char- 
acter to please the host rather than the guests. " Good 
honest fried bacon and hot Christian cornbread. 
Nothing like it to fill a man up and make him feel 



230 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

righteous. You get a heap better living up in this 
country than you can at the St. Charles, for all the fuss 
they make about it," a boniface in northern Mississippi 
told a traveler who found it difficult to swallow any 
part of the meal set before him. " It's lucky you '11 
have something better to travel on to-night than them 
French fritterzeed, Dutch flabbergasted hell-fixin's," 
he added. 

That was the worst of it; the travel went on mer- 
cilessly by night and by day, heedless of wearied bones 
or suffering digestion. Distances were so great that 
it had to go on if the wayfarer wished to reach his 
destination, at the rate of six miles an hour. And the 
passion for arriving is no new growth on American 
soil. Small wonder that osteopathy and massage de- 
veloped into a science only after stage-coach days were 
well over. 

Canals of Dutch model became popular in Europe 
during the half century before our War of 1812, and 
their advantages were not overlooked when our people 
awoke to the necessity for better means of communica- 
tion. Many such projects were discussed in many 
places. The Erie Canal, chief among those that were 
actually built, and chief in the changes it wrought in 
our physical and financial history, was a growth of 
forty years from its earliest inception to final accom- 
plishment. It had its small beginning as far back as 
1785 when a bill came before the New York legislature 
" for the improvement of inland navigation at various 
points between Albany and Oswego." Fifteen years 
later Gouverneur Morris, shy of " chimeras " but gifted 
with imagination, pointed out that a continuous water- 
way between the Hudson River and Lake Erie was 
inevitable and that hundreds of large ships were des- 
tined to " bound on the billows of these inland seas," 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 231 

and that " the proudest empire of Europe " was " but 
a bauble compared with what America may be, — 
must be." 

Seven years after that a series of essays signed 
" Hercules," written by Jesse Hawley, a patriot lan- 
guishing in a debtor's prison, was published in the 
" Genessee Messenger " in the winter of 1807—8 and 
brought the matter before a larger public; but it took 
the War of 181 2 to demonstrate the need for such a 
waterway. 

With the glow of triumphant ship-building and ship- 
fighting on the lakes still warming the hearts of New 
York voters, and the heavy cost of transporting muni- 
tions of war to Buffalo over nearly impassable roads 
still tugging at their pockets, plans for the canal almost 
completed themselves, though there were those who 
ridiculed " the ditch " and averred that no man living 
would see it finished. De Witt Clinton, governor of 
New York when actual work was begun in 18 17, 
turned the first spadeful of earth and he also poured 
the keg of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic in 
the ceremonies that marked its completion eight years 
later. He had imagination to see that this canal would 
turn the country east of the Mississippi into " one vast 
island, susceptible of circumnavigation to the extent 
of many thousand miles " and save to the Eastern cities 
much commerce that would otherwise find its way down 
to New Orleans. But even he did not divine that it 
was to wrest business supremacy from Philadelphia, 
up to that time our chief seaport, and make New York 
the undisputed commercial center of America. Nor 
did he see how mightily it was to influence American 
history by turning a stream of New England energy 
and thrift into the upper Ohio and Mississippi val- 
leys. 



232 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

The opening of the Erie Canal was made the occa- 
sion of much ceremony and rejoicing. Cannon 
sounded in succession all the way from Buffalo to 
Sandy Hook and all the way back again, to announce 
the letting in of the waters. A fleet of gaily decorated 
boats starting from Buffalo was joined at intervals 
by others during the eight days it took them to reach 
New York. Met there by another fleet, the two pro- 
ceeded down the bay " amidst the roar of cannon," with 
a fine display of bunting, and much speech-making to 
witness the union of " our American Mediterranean 
with the Atlantic " when Governor Clinton poured the 
sweet water of the lakes into the brine of the Sound. 

Twelve years later New York alone had over 650 
miles of canals within her borders; and even before its 
completion the prospective success of the Erie Canal 
had stimulated similar ventures elsewhere. 

Ground was broken to join Lake Erie and the Ohio 
River by a canal. The Delaware and Hudson canal 
was begun with music, prayer, and speeches. The 
Delaware and Chesapeake and Delaware and Ohio 
canals were also started and plans were afoot to do 
great things in the valley of the Connecticut River by 
way of uniting Long Island Sound with Montreal ; as 
well as less ambitious schemes to connect New Haven 
with Northampton, Providence with Worcester, and 
the like. The echoes of the Erie Canal celebration 
had scarcely died away when a merchant of New York 
wrote to Henry Clay, announcing that he and several 
others wished to build a canal across the Isthmus of 
Panama. But this scheme was ahead of its time and 
died at birth. 

To the elegancies of travel by stage-coach were now 
added canal boats de luxe, each containing a " ladies' 
dressing room " with berths for " four females," the 




ROBERT FULTON 

From a portrait in possession of Robert Fulton Blight, Esq. 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 233 

inevitable bar, a cook's galley and a long cabin used by 
day for dining- and sitting-room and transformed 
promptly at nine o'clock into a sleeping place of sar- 
dine-box ventilation, by means of hanging berths, mat- 
tresses, and curtains. During daylight hours the roof 
could be used as a place whereon to pass the time, 
though the warning cry " Low bridge ! " was apt to 
send every one prostrate until the obstruction was 
passed. The agile could also relieve the tedium of the 
journey by vaulting ashore at any moment and running 
along the towpath until they chose to drop again upon 
the boat from one of these low bridges. Altogether 
it was a distinct advance in comfort upon the crowding 
and jolting of even the most elegant Sultana or Loch 
Lomond. 

It was a gain in purse as well, the rate in cost and 
speed being " a cent and a half a mile, mile and a half 
an hour," as opposed to the four cents a mile charged 
by the stage-coaches, though the latter, on the other 
hand, claimed to cover the ground four times as fast. 

Another and more speedy kind of boat had also 
come into being. In 1785, within a few years of the 
time when Gouverneur Morris wrote that letter filled 
with sage reflections about the current of the Missis- 
sippi, James Rumsey was propelling a boat by steam 
upon the Potomac. Other inventors did the same else- 
where, to their own satisfaction though not to the con- 
version of a doubting public. One of these, Robert 
Fulton, carried his idea to Paris, where he pursued 
his experiments upon the Seine, and had the good for- 
tune to enlist the cooperation of the rich and influen- 
tial Robert R. Livingston, then our minister to France, 
the same gentleman on whose estate the brown cloth 
for Washington's inaugural suit had been spun and 
woven. He had money and interest to lavish upon 



234 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

inventors as well as upon Presidents ; and a shrewd eye 
for profit. By 1807 he and Fulton were in full en- 
joyment of an exclusive right to navigate the waters 
of New York State by steam. Four years later this 
monopoly having become valuable enough to evade, the 
" team boat," a rival ferry, operated safely and sanely 
by means of horses walking in a circle, was evolved to 
avoid paying them royalty ; and soon a flock of lawsuits 
moved by steam descended upon the courts, to hover 
over them to this day. But it was long before the full 
possibilities of the new motive power were realized. 
Even as late as 1838, at the very moment when the 
Sirius and the Great Western successfully crossed the 
ocean under steam. Dr. Dionysius Lardner, a worthy 
and by no mean uncelebrated Englishman of science, 
was explaining to the world conclusively why it could 
never be done. 

For a time steam power was unsuccessful on our 
Western rivers, chiefly because the experimental boats 
were built with holds too deep for use in seasons of 
low water. It was only after they had been adapted 
to the fluctuating character of the streams, given added 
length and so little depth that they could be said to 
" slide on a drop of dew," that any appreciable number 
of them followed the wake of the pioneer boat launched 
on the Ohio near Pittsburg by " a Mr. Roosewalt, a 
gentleman of enterprise," who made a thrilling voyage 
in 181 1, that year of flood, comet, and earthquake, his 
boat being connected in the minds of many who saw 
it with these disturbing natural phenomena. About 
the time of Jackson's victory at New Orleans, colored 
laborers, roused from congenital lethargy, rushed ex- 
citedly along the levees shouting and pointing at a 
boat, unmistakably on fire, that floated persistently up 
stream. But it was quite ten years after the battle of 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 235 

New Orleans before steam caused a marked change in 
the number of craft propelled by hand that swarmed 
upon the Mississippi, 

These were varied and picturesque. There were 
bark canoes quickly made and quickly worn out; 
pirogues propelled by oars or setting-poles, and hard 
to take against the current; barges like great square 
boxes; and batteaux, wide in the middle and tapering 
toward each end. " New Orleans boats," great pointed 
covered hulks with a capacity of forty or fifty tons of 
freight and carrying almost as many men ; and keel- 
boats, long, narrow, and completely roofed over, whose 
crews manipulated their long poles from running- 
boards extending along the outside. Occasionally an 
" Ark " was to be seen, an early form of Western 
houseboat, invented by a frugal citizen of Dutch name 
upon the Juniata, to avoid paying rent. There were 
rafts also, bobbing fields of logs more than a hundred 
feet long, in the center of which a rudimentary home 
life went on in the little cabin whose hearthstone was 
a wooden box lined with clay. Then there was the 
galley, a model boat with covered deck, and oars for 
motive power. 

Most important of all to the opening West were the 
flatboats or Kentucky Broadhorns, square at the ends, 
half roofed over, and managed by two great " sweeps " 
on a side, worked by two men each, a long steering oar 
in the stern, and a short oar at the bow called the 
" gouger," for additional help against the current. 

It was upon boats of this type that pioneer families, 
singly or in groups of two or three, floated down the 
rivers to their new homes, and sometimes into history, 
as did the Lincolns, father and son. 

As the population increased, peddler-boats were 
fitted out for river trade, and the sound of their horns 



236 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

might announce the arrival of drygoods or hardware 
or even a floating lottery. 

Those who manned the river craft were as distinctly 
a race by themselves as the freighters of the Conestoga 
wagons. Among them was a goodly proportion of 
criminals who had flocked to the Ohio Valley as the 
Indians left it. All were rough and given to profanity, 
but all were daring and brave. When the steamboats 
came they did not languish. They simply climbed 
aboard the new craft, adapted themselves to new re- 
quirements, and increased with increasing trade. It 
was estimated that in 1832 90,000 people were sup- 
ported by the river traffic in its various forms. 

Once established. Western steamboats took on an 
air of luxury, rather specious than real. Mrs. Trollope 
in her frank criticism complained that they carried an 
overplus of mirrors and a dearth of towels. Sleeping 
accommodations bore about the same ratio to passen- 
gers that lifeboats bear to souls aboard a transatlantic 
liner; and men stood small chance of getting a bed be- 
cause of the heartless American custom of providing 
for the women first. The few bunks that remained 
were distributed by lottery. " A set of tickets equal 
in number to that of the gentlemen " was provided, 
from which each man drew as he paid his fare. If 
there happened to be a number upon his ticket it served 
as a voucher for his sleeping place. If he drew a 
blank there was nothing to do but stretch himself with 
other unfortunates upon the lockers or on deck. This 
gambling was at least conducted without favoritism. 
Bargeman and belted earl fared alike, so long as each 
had the price of a ticket. Because a foreign traveler 
happened to be " one of them there kings " in the land 
of his birth, was no reason for interrupting this im- 
partially democratic arrangement. The tall Duke of 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 237 

Saxe-Weimer found himself the center of a group 
slumbering upon benches, himself given the longest 
bench and that pieced out by a chair, — not on account 
of his title, but of his height. Being a friendly duke 
he did not mind. " It had the appearance of a heredi- 
tary sepulcher, in the center of which I lay as father 
of the family," he thought. 

At meal times a long table running the length of the 
gilded " saloon " was set out with a solid and inelegant 
equipment of dishes, cutlery, and food, punctuated 
by pitchers of water and decanters of spirit placed 
down the center at convenient intervals. Here the pas- 
sengers flocked upon notice that the meal was ready, 
ate in the ravenous silence that so astonished travelers 
from across the sea, and departed as quickly as they 
had come, many hastening to the bar ; for by some un- 
written law (possibly explained in the quality of liquor 
provided) the decanters upon the table, free as the 
water beside them, were rarely touched, though the 
consumption of alcohol upon the boat was not light. 

The American way of hurrying to one thing and 
then to another was a never-ending source of wonder 
to the stranger within our gates. One who was fortu- 
nate enough to get a berth wrote of being disturbed 
before five in the morning by movements of his fellow 
passengers, which led him to believe that they were 
nearing their destination. But he learned that the 
boat would not make a landing before nine or ten 
o'clock. " You would not be at all surprised at their 
getting up at four o'clock with the intention of arriv- 
ing at nine," he asserted. "If one hundred Americans 
were going to be shot, they would contend for the 
priority, so strong is their habit." 

The one place where they seemed willing to linger 
was in the men's saloon, where play waxed high and 



238 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

exciting, and professional gamblers reaped their har- 
vest. This saloon was often divided from that allotted 
to the women by folding doors. The writer will always 
remember the description given her by an old lady of 
a night on the Mississippi in her youth, when the boat 
struck a " snag " with such force as to roll these doors 
back and display as in a picture the gamblers in their 
seats, transfixed, every motion arrested, every cheek 
blanched, during the slow-moving seconds that passed 
before it was known whether the shock was merely an 
incident of the voyage or the beginning of a catas- 
trophe. 

For these river steamers were scarcely as safe as they 
were comfortable. Their boilers had an unstable way 
with them. On the Hudson, because of this tendency 
to explode and also on account of the " disagreeable 
motion," cautious Easterners made it profitable to at- 
tach " safety barges " in the rear, real floating hotels, 
furnished " even with silk curtains and surrounded by 
a piazza, which in warm weather must be extremely 
pleasant." 

But in the hurrying West no such concession was 
made to timidity. The mad passion of unrest seemed 
to concentrate in the boats themselves. The flimsy 
things were built in haste and run at top speed until a 
spark, or a snag, or a bit of bravado brought about 
the inevitable end. Usually they " burned a hole in the 
night " and disappeared, carrying passengers with them 
sometimes ; always carrying regrets, for their engineers 
and captains loved them as men love race-horses. 
Their careers were usually short. " She died in three 
years," one old riverman said with feeling about a boat 
that he had seen built and perish. 

Often the catastrophe came as the climax of a race 
more exciting than any race on land, and so close in 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 239 

every sense that railings scraped against each other 
and the roofs of the great side-wheels knocked to- 
gether. Boilers grew overheated, and men cheered 
and women went into hysterics, and nobody cared for 
anything except to cram more wood into the furnace, 
— " rosin and pine," — until one boat or the other ran 
out of fuel and dropped behind, or else caught fire and 
sank. 

It took nerve to hold one's place in that profane, 
dare-devil aquatic profession. Quick wit and clear eye 
were essential in a pilot on the Mississippi with its 
tugging, treacherous current. It took heroism, too, 
of no mean sort. " England expects every man to do 
his duty " had its silent counterpart in the rough code 
of these river men. We all remember Jim Bludso, 
drawn for us by John Hay. " He war n't no saint. 
Them engineers is all pretty much alike, — One wife 
at Natchez-under-the-hill and another one here in Pike. 
A keerless man in his talk was Jim, and an awkward 
hand in a row." But when the fire burst out as the old 
boat cleared the bar, " Quick as a flash she turned and 
made for that wilier bank on the right. There was 
runnin' and cursin' but Jim yelled out over all the in- 
fernal roar, * I '11 hold her nozzle agin the bank till the 
last galoot 's ashore ! ' " — " And Bludso's ghost went 
up alone in the smoke of the Prairie Belle." 

By 1825 the country east of the Mississippi was 
overlaid by a network of turnpikes, canals, and steam- 
boat lines. They were most numerous in the Atlantic 
States, from Maine down to Maryland. Then they 
grew sparse, to thicken again in the Carolinas. New 
York and Pennsylvania were well supplied; and the 
Ohio Valley south of the river had almost as many as 
New England. They were thick also in the valley of 
the Mississippi, from the region of Alton down to the 



240 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

mouth of the Ohio. Another group centered upon 
New Orleans; but the long stretch of valley between 
showed scarcely one ; and only two crossed the wastes 
of Northern Illinois and Indiana, to converge upon a 
point on Lake Michigan that had long been known as 
Fort Dearborn but was now called Chicago. Beyond 
,the Mississippi there were practically none at all. 

The canals were comparatively few; and as turn- 
pikes followed streams and natural configurations of 
the ground the effect of such a map was to show that, 
while there were many roads, there was no direct route 
from anywhere to anywhere else. Then came the 
railways, built at first merely as short, connecting links 
between watercourses, natural or artificial. Once their 
usefulness was demonstrated, the country adopted them 
with a rush, but their previous history had been slow 
enough. Oliver Evans who died in 1 819 at the age of 
sixty-four spent the larger part of his life showing in- 
different countrymen in how many ways steam could 
be used on land and water. He claimed that he could 
make a railway upon which cars could move at the 
rate of fifteen miles an hour. John Stevens of Ho- 
boken also believed this possible, and tried to persuade 
the Erie Canal Commission to build a railroad instead 
of a waterway. His enthusiasm of invention being 
overlaid by a comfortable blanket of philosophy, he 
consoled himself with the thought that no country 
could be expected to make the change from execrable 
roads to steam railways at a single bound. If his 
generation adopted canals he ought to rest content. 
The next might take an interest in horse-tramways, 
and the third perhaps countenance railroads run by 
steam. In 1815, after the War of 1812 had opened 
the eyes of the Delaware legislature, Stevens was 
granted the first railroad charter issued in the Western 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 241 

hemisphere, for a Hne to connect the Delaware and 
Raritan rivers. But there the matter ended, money to 
build the road not being forthcoming. 

About the time Oliver Evans died, a bold individual 
from Boston, named Benjamin Dearborn, appealed to 
Congress for aid in demonstrating a new invention by 
which he expected to move, at the rate of a mile in 
three minutes, a car large enough for twenty or thirty 
people to stand in " without stooping," and to eat and 
sleep and otherwise disport themselves " as in packets." 
A practical Congress scorned him as a dreamer and he 
and his petition were forgotten. 

Meantime, Stevens, who was persistent, albeit a 
philosopher, turned to Pennsylvania, having failed to 
get recognition in New York or money in New Jersey. 
The business men of Philadelphia, alarmed at the havoc 
the Erie Canal and Western steamboat lines seemed 
likely to play with their trade, caught at this means of 
bettering transportation between their town and Pitts- 
burg and asked the legislature for permission to build 
a railroad between Harrisburg and Pittsburg, trusting 
to turnpikes already in use and to canals already begun 
for the rest of the way. But the legislature insisted 
that if the road were built at all it must be longer, in 
order to deflect the commerce of the valley of the 
Susquehanna that was now flowing toward Baltimore. 

The charter was granted ; then another delay oc- 
curred. People began to ask just what it was that 
they had undertaken to do. "What is a railroad?" 
was a question printed in newspapers, with the editor- 
ial addendum, " Perhaps some other correspondent can 
tell." The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion 
of Internal Improvements sent an agent abroad to find 
out all he could about railroads in Europe. Meanwhile 
the public prints were flooded with detached facts, es- 



242 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

says, and descriptions, published when possible with 
accompanying plans and cross-sections, and padded 
where information was scarce, with wordy eulogies of 
the proposed improvement. After all, very little was 
known. Experienced engineers there were none. 
Skilled workmen were equally lacking, and all the 
practical details of construction had to be evolved and 
tested by experiment. 

The business community divided speedily into two 
camps, one favoring canals, the other willing to mort- 
gage its future upon the success of railroads. Discus- 
sion waxed clamorous. The friends of railways 
pointed in triumph to the fact that freezing weather 
would not render them useless as it did the canals. 
Partisans of the latter answered that winter lasted only 
a small portion of the year, while curves in tracks were 
inevitable and permanent, and they doubted if a loco- 
motive could drag a train of cars around a bend. 
They also asserted that the supply of strap iron in the 
whole country would not suffice to cover the tops of 
the wooden rails necessary. 

Gradually the friends of the railroad triumphed and 
the day of railway enterprise began. Baltimore, wak- 
ing to the fact that Philadelphia was stealing a march 
upon her, bestirred herself, and on July 4, 1828, in- 
augurated with much pomp the system which has since 
been known as the Baltimore and Ohio. 

By 1830 steam and rails were well established in the 
favor of the business world, although only about thirty 
miles of road had been built. By the end of 1831 
about a hundred miles had been laid. At the end of 
1832 the figures had jumped to almost 1300. In 1834 
Michel Chevalier, sent over by the French Govern- 
ment to inspect our public works, declared that the 
word " railroad " assailed his seasick ears every ten 



ROADS OF THE PROMISED LAND 243 

minutes during the voyage, and that on landing he 
found them everywhere, — in the water, at the bottom 
of coal mines, in the bowels of the earth, and suspended 
in the heavens upon trestles. He even found them 
used for bringing food into the prison at Philadelphia. 
And optimists were predicting that a continuous line 
would shortly be built from Boston down to New- 
Orleans. 

Some concessions had, of course, to be made to the 
conservative. For a time the cars on the embryonic 
" B. & O." were drawn by horses ; and the first trial of 
strength on this road between steam and horse power 
ended like the race of the hare and tortoise, for the 
locomotive broke down and the horse won in a walk. 

As late as 1842 public spirited individuals who prided 
themselves on being abreast of the times passed a reso- 
lution in Dorchester town meeting directing their rep- 
resentatives to prevent, if possible, the "calamity" of 
a railroad entering their town. And a citizen of the 
threatened district deploring in a local paper the gar- 
dens, farms, and interests which " all, — all are to be 
sacrificed under a car ten thousand times worse for the 
public than the car of Juggernaut," made one last ap- 
peal to reason in these words : " What better or more 
durable communication can be had than the Neponset 
River or the wide Atlantic? " Observe the sequence, 
— the Neponset River or wide Atlantic. 

The absurd and sublime have gone hand in hand 
" most friendly " in this new land of ours. Sometimes 
it is hard to distinguish between them. 

As a means of broadening the outlook and bring- 
ing far-separated regions into sympathy, nothing in 
world history has equaled the inventions of modern 
transportation. Not only in the East but in farthest 
pioneer communities such questions were weighed and 



244 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

discussed. The merits and practicability of railroads 
formed, it will be remembered, part of Lincoln's first 
public paper, his " Address to the Voters of Sangamon 
County," when, young and unknown, he presented him- 
self as candidate for the legislature. Indeed, the atti- 
tude of the West toward steam and rails was quite as 
intelligent and more friendly than that of conservatives 
along the Neponset River or the wide Atlantic. 

The iron rail is, in truth, the link, symbolic and ma- 
terial, that unites not only far-scattered sections but 
our American past and present. It was Charles Car- 
roll of Carrollton, a venerable signer of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, who laid the corner-stone of the 
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. And all the railroads 
that cover the land have been built within the lifetime 
of those still taking an active interest in affairs. Thus 
the span of life of two men bridges not only our entire 
national existence but the marvelous changes from the 
old Indian trails to the railroad, the auto, — and wings. 

** To think," said one whose journey out into the 
world began amid the splendors of the newly opened 
Erie Canal, " that I have lived to see with my own 
eyes, a successful flying machine!" 



CHAPTER XII 

THE RED MENACE 

THE time-honored gibe that the early colonists 
fell first upon their knees and then upon the 
aborigines, has in it more truth than it is 
pleasant to remember. The whites, arrogant in their 
superior mechanical skill and intolerant in a theology 
that they believed directly inspired by Heaven, could 
see only sloth in the Indian's mode of life and only 
idolatry in symbols that had for him deep religious 
meaning. On their part the Indians, proud and 
cruel, had keen eyes for inconsistencies betv^een the 
promises and acts of white men, and only scorn for a 
set of virtues that seemed to them mere weakness, like 
the white man's willingness to till the land, his unwill- 
ingness to fight from ambush, and the courtesy he 
showed to women. 

Fleet of foot, keen of vision, courageous and versed 
in secrets of the wilderness, the Indians at first held an 
immense advantage; and it is evidently true, as we 
have been told, that the country was sparsely settled 
in pre-Columbian times, or else that they were most un- 
wisely hospitable in allowing the newcomers to gain a 
foothold. After it was done the leaders among the red 
men were pitted against picked men and the great 
mechanical aids of a strong and acquisitive race. Race 
antagonism was sharpened into a life and death struggle 
by the natural impulse of a brave people to defend its 
homes against the insatiable land hunger of the whites. 
Year after year the struggle continued, with wrong 

245 



246 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

now on one side, now on the other, and massacre and 
horrors unspeakable on both. 

The warfare continued almost to the beginning of 
the twentieth century, and in it a race of mighty beasts 
as well as a race of men was practically wiped from 
the face of the earth. 

The buffalo, upon which the Indian depended for 
food and raiment and sometimes for shelter, originally 
ranged the continent from the Alleghanies as far west 
as Nevada, and southward nearly to Central Mexico. 
Boone, on his first trip into the wilderness, saw them 
" more frequent than , . . cattle in the settlements, 
browsing on the leaves of the cane or cropping the 
herbage of these extensive plains, fearless because ig- 
norant of the violence of man." But the trapper went 
before the settler and by 1800 there were few left 
east of the Mississippi. After the war of races began 
again west of the Mississippi, and the Indians, resent- 
ing the presence of the whites, recommenced their piti- 
less vengeance on emigrants and unprotected settlers, 
the United States army deliberately hunted and killed 
the buffalo, in an effort to bring the red men to terms 
by destroying their supply of food. Even as late as 
the seventies the herds were so large that they could 
break through a military command on the march if a 
gap were unwarily left between sections; and some- 
times soldiers and wagons meeting them on their mi- 
grations had to "go into park" and wait until the 
great four-footed army passed by. But it was an un- 
equal contest and the herds retreated before the white 
man at the rate of about ten miles a year. 

At the time the United States became a nation there 
were three great groups of Indian people upon its 
borders, — the Iroquois or Six Nations to the north, 
extending from Canada down into Pennsylvania ; the 



THE RED MENACE 247 

Algonquin tribes between the Ohio River and the Great 
Lakes; and in what was then the far Southwest, the 
region between the Tennessee River and the Gulf, the 
Appalachian group, composed like the others of many 
tribes, some of whom were partially civilized. The 
triangle between the Tennessee and the Ohio rivers 
and the Alleghany Mountains was a neutral ground 
where none might live but all might hunt or travel. 
Farther to the west were unknown tribes with whom 
our settlers had successively to deal as they pressed 
forward, the personnel but not the problem changing 
with each generation of pioneers. 

The Continental Congress early divided the territory 
occupied by the Indians into two districts, with the 
Ohio River as the boundary between them, and sent 
agents and missionaries to live among their people. 
South of the Ohio settlement increased. North of it, 
where a different system of disposing of public lands 
prevailed, it languished, and for years the Ohio re- 
mained the dividing line between savagery and civil- 
ization. The Federal Government took up its obliga- 
tions where the Continental Congress left them, and 
tried more or less effectively to interpose between the 
Indians and the greed or injustice of individuals. The 
national ideal from the first appears to have been edu- 
cation and gradual absorption into the body of citizens ; 
the national practice was too often abuse, for which the 
Indians took fearful revenge. 

Washington pointed out to Congress that we were 
" bound in honor to treat them with kindness and even 
generosity," and it was he who gave official sanction to 
the Indian Factory System, originated in 1796, to sell 
them goods " at cost and carriage," receiving their furs 
in exchange and selling these to defray the expense. 
It remained in operation twenty-five years, but proved 



248 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

a hotbed of graft and extortion, instead of a benevo- 
lent institution. 

As might be expected, Jefferson took a Hvely though 
an academic interest in the red men. When a turn of 
fortune presented the country with the unexpected and 
breath-taking treasure of Louisiana, he saw in it a 
solution of the vexed problem of the Indians by setting 
apart land beyond the Mississippi for their perpetual 
and exclusive use. He corresponded with John Jacob 
Astor about establishing trade with little known tribes 
in the Northwest and did what he could to introduce 
among those nearer home vaccination and other benefits 
of civilized life. We are told that a large trunk, 
broken open and looted by thieves as his effects were 
being sent by water to Monticello from Washington 
on his retirement from the presidency, contained fifty 
Indian vocabularies that he had been thirty years, col- 
lecting, some of the dialects being even then extinct. 
The thieves, having no use for such booty, tumbled 
them into the bay, from which only a few muddy leaves 
were rescued. 

Alliance offensive and defensive between the Indians 
and our white neighbors added to the bitterness of 
feeling. It was hard to forget the French and Indian 
massacres of colonial days; and most unwise to over- 
look a menacing friendship between the British and 
Indians on our northern frontier, where it was to the 
interest of both to discourage our settlement: on the 
part of the Indians because it threatened their food and 
their lands ; on the part of the British because it inter- 
fered with their profitable fur trade. Nor was it pos- 
sible to ignore the fact that in the South lawless Creeks 
and Seminoles streamed at will over the border into 
Spanish territory to escape punishment for acts com- 
mitted on United States soil. 



THE RED MENACE 249 

With repeated offenses and growing population the 
friction increased and fighting was carried on both 
North and South on a continually larger scale. In 
1794, General Wayne, known to the Indians as "The 
Chief who Never Sleeps," broke the power of the In- 
dians of Ohio at the battle of Fallen Timbers. A quar- 
ter of a century later Tecumseh, a really great leader, 
inspired by the vision of federation among his people, 
called upon his Indian allies to unite and end once for 
all the advance of the whites, — and his defeat raised 
an obscure General William Henry Harrison to a 
Presidential possibility. The wars from 1812 to 1818 
with the Creeks and Cherokees and Seminoles greatly 
increased the reputation of Andrew Jackson and has- 
tened, if they did not actually cause, the purchase of 
Florida from Spain in 181 9. 

Emigration streaming westward left Indian reser- 
vations in States east of the Mississippi like islands 
surrounded by an encroaching flood. There were well- 
defined geographical lines which the two races were 
supposed not to cross, but on both sides greed and ven- 
geance often overstepped the boundaries. The prob- 
lem grew more vexing with the years, and Jefferson's 
suggestion of removal across the Mississippi was more 
and more favored. Monroe made it the subject of a 
special message to Congress. John Quincy Adams 
advocated the same course, repelling the idea of grant- 
ing independence and statehood to those among the 
Cherokees who had become largely civilized, owning 
herds and houses and orchards, weaving cloth, keeping 
inns, and trading with the whites. When Jackson be- 
came President he changed the policy of removal be- 
yond the Mississippi only in the manner of its execu- 
tion. 

A country west of Missouri and Arkansas had been 



250 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

set apart in which each tribe was allotted a tract 
larger than it occupied in the East. Tribal govern- 
ment under supervision of the United States was to be 
maintained, schools and churches, council houses and 
dwellings, the mechanic arts and farm utensils, being 
given the Indians in their new home, which they were 
assured was to remain theirs " while the trees grow or 
the streams run." A fiction of voluntary choice was 
left them. Delegations from the tribes went out, 
looked over the land, and reported to their people. 
Some went gladly; others refused. The Cherokee na- 
tion split ; those who wished to follow their ancestral 
mode of life moving on, the rest staying by their farms 
and orchards. But Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi 
refused to consent to permanent reservations within 
their borders, broke up the tribes, seized the lands the 
Indians claimed as their own, and practically forced 
the Government to move them. In Jackson's adminis- 
tration a congressional act of May, 1830, decreed 
wholesale removal, which was consummated in the next 
ten years, all the tribes from Michigan to Florida, with 
some trifling exceptions, crossing the river in a migra- 
tion, the picturesqueness and hardships of which De 
Tocqueville caught and fixed forever in his book upon 
America. 

" At the end of the year 1831," he wrote, " while I 
was on the left bank of the Mississippi at a place 
named by Europeans Memphis, there arrived a numer- 
ous band of Choctaws. . . . These savages had left 
their country and were endeavoring to gain the right 
bank of the Mississippi, where they hoped to find an 
asylum which had been promised them by the American 
Government. It was then the middle of winter and 
the cold was unusually severe; the snow had frozen 
hard upon the ground, and the river was drifting huge 



THE RED MENACE 251 

masses of ice. The Indians had their famihes with 
them ; and they brought in their train the wounded and 
sick, with children newly born, and old men upon the 
verge of death. They possessed neither tents nor 
wagons, but only their arms and some provisions. I 
saw them embark to pass the mighty river, and never 
will that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance. 
No cry, no sob, was heard amongst the assembled 
crowd; all were silent. Their calamities were of an- 
cient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. 
The Indians had all stepped into the bark which was to 
carry them across, but their dogs remained upon the 
bank. As soon as these animals perceived that their 
masters were finally leaving the shore, they set up a 
dismal howl, and plunging all together into the icy 
waters of the Mississippi they swam after the boat." 
No American could see the pathos of such a hegira; 
no foreigner feel the bitterness or the necessity that 
drove red men from the country in such wholesale 
fashion. Irreconcilable conflict of interest was at the 
bottom of the whole matter and it must be confessed 
that in following our own interests we have been far 
from fair or logical in our treatment of these real 
Americans. We have too often regarded with ridicule 
and suspicion, almost as an affront, unsuccessful efforts 
on their part to conform to our standards, and have 
judged them in the mass as a distinctly inferior race, 
instead of judging each one upon his own merits. The 
wide gulf between their native best and their civiliza- 
tion-tainted worst is no greater than that between the 
heroes and scoundrels of any other race. As a whole, 
their intelligence has not been very high or their moral 
fiber very strong, and the grafting of our vices upon 
their nature has wrought quick and permanent de- 
generacy. 



252 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

The renegade whites, outcasts from our own civi- 
lization, " men who painted their faces," and entered 
into more or less lasting ties with them, have been 
justly looked upon with unqualified contempt. The 
drunken and thieving Indians lounging in white cabins 
and outposts, drinking whenever possible and begging 
or stealing continually, have driven settlers and set- 
tlers' wives distracted with, their shiftlessness and 
squalor. Their lapses into savagery, as quick and ap- 
parently as unreasoning as lightning, have been the 
abiding household terror of every frontier cabin from 
one ocean to the other. But the wrong has not been 
all on one side. 

De Tocqueville compared the Indian's lofty idea of 
personal worth and lofty scorn of the white man's 
tricky methods to that of the noble of the Middle Ages 
in his castle. " He only requires to become a con- 
queror to complete the resemblance. Thus, however 
strange it may seem, it is in the forests of the New 
World, and not amongst the Europeans who people 
its coasts, that the ancient prejudices of Europe are still 
in existence." 

Perhaps he was not wrong. The Indian was re- 
ligious after his own fashion, and many of his customs 
and ceremonies were as full of mystic symbolism as 
those of the devout medieval Christian. The trouble 
was that, like the Christian, he seldom lived up to the 
standard he professed. The moral cuts both ways, and 
the story of the chiefs from the far West making their 
solemn pilgrimage to the East in search of the wonder- 
ful Holy Book of which they had heard, carries in it a 
stinging rebuke as well as rather grim humor. 

Davy Crockett's description of an old battle ground 
where the skulls of dead Indians lay so thick that it 
" looked like a great gourd patch " brings up a vivid 



THE RED MENACE 253 

picture of their bravery in battle. A bravery equaled 
by their cruelty; but if they were cruel they suffered 
cruelty in return with a stoicism that could not fail 
to wring admiration from their adversaries. 

The fact that a man like Daniel Boone could suffer 
heavy personal bereavement at their hands, even to 
the killing of his first-born, and feel no enmity in 
return ; could hunt them in warfare with the same im- 
partial thoroughness with which he hunted beasts of 
prey, and when the fortunes of war delivered him into 
their hands receive from them no bodily harm, speaks 
volumes for uprightness of character on both sides. 

They had good minds. The simple savage soon 
learned the wiles of the white men even though he 
disdained to profit by the white man's kind of wisdom. 
Calhoun, when secretary of war, conceived the bril- 
liant idea, or accepted it from one of his subordinates, 
of impressing the savages on the Yellowstone River 
by sending among them a steamboat built like a great 
water-snake, that should charge up-stream, belching 
forth smoke, and reduce them to awe by the detona- 
tions of a heavy gun concealed in its painted sides. 
This and similar efforts met with merited contempt. 
Even a dog would have scented the imposture, and 
these men with the keenness of wild animal instincts 
still upon them had native mental gifts equal to the 
whites. Born orators, their speakers, on occasions of 
treaty-making, were as logical as their opponents. 
Poetic in thought, flowery in expression, and untram- 
meled by the notion that time is of value, their pre- 
ambles were endless ; but when they came to the point, 
they could state it without wasting a single word. 

Their characterizations were as witty as they were 
sharp. " There walks a wigwam," said one of them 
at first sight of a woman in crinoline. General An- 



254 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

thony Wayne, " The Chief who Never Sleeps," was 
also " General To-morrow," because a dilatory govern- 
ment made him so slow to fulfil the treaty promises he 
made. Red Bud, a Cherokee chief who was suffi- 
ciently civilized to take advantage of modern con- 
veniences, paid two buckskins to have inserted in the 
nearest newspaper a " talk " with another Cherokee 
chief, warning him to leave alone one William Cocke, 
" the white man who lives among the mulberry trees," 
because " the mulberry man talks very strong and runs 
very fast," — not a flattering description of one who 
afterward served as senator from Tennessee. 

Mrs. Trollope, critical of all things American, 
waxed almost enthusiastic over a sermon preached by 
a young Pequot Indian which she said was the best 
that she heard in America. And Dickens described a 
young brave who quoted Marmion and presented him 
with his visiting card on one of the Western steam- 
boats. 

The veneer of white civilization upon the Indian tem- 
perament produced bizarre and often lamentable re- 
sults, but red men of wit and character remained men 
of wit and character to the end. " Indian giving " is 
proverbial and an Indian's promise has often been as 
treacherous as a treaty signed and sealed between rival 
diplomatists abroad; but again an Indian's word of 
honor given to one he respected, has been as sacredly 
kept as the word of a Bayard, — even to his own hurt. 
General Scott, a man whose personal fearlessness and 
love of the showy trappings of war made him a soldier 
after the Indians' own heart, saw a striking instance 
of this toward the end of the Indian troubles of 1832. 
There were, he tells us, at Fort Armstrong on Rock 
Island in the Mississippi River, " three civil prisoners, 
Sacs, confined by an Indian agent on the charge of mur- 



THE RED MENACE 255 

der, — that is, surprising and killing a party of Meno- 
minees, old enemies, in exact retaliation and according 
to Indian habits, of a like act on the part of the latter." 
An outbreak of cholera among the white soldiers made 
the fort an unsafe place for whites and Indians alike, 
and Scott was anxious to clear it temporarily of as 
many of its inmates as possible. " If I permit you," 
he said to the prisoners, " as you desire, to seek safety 
in the prairies and if attacked with the disease, to cure 
yourselves with your own unscientific remedies, will 
you, when the cholera shall have left the island, return 
here to be dealt with, — probably hung, — as a civil 
court may adjudge? " 

They said they would, and it was agreed that a cer- 
tain signal, hung from the branches of a dead tree, 
should announce that the cholera was over. " Loaded 
with hard bread, and armed with guns, they were put 
ashore on the mainland. The cholera having passed 
away, the signal was given," and true to their word the 
murderers presented themselves. The General placed 
them again on parole, pending the answer to an appeal 
he had already made to Washington in their behalf, 
which in time was granted. 

The clash between the two races is the phase of our 
new civilization that corresponds most nearly to the 
medieval in picturesqueness and strong contrasts of 
light and shadow. To quote again from General Scott, 
who admired the red man " not yet taught by his white 
brethren to lie, to cheat and steal, except to and from 
an enemy," we have here an example of American life 
in the thirties worthy of the wildest days of the Scot- 
tish border : 

While treaty-making was in progress after the upris- 
ing of 1832, " a demand came up from a judge in 
Illinois, sixty miles below, for an Indian murderer, his 



256 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

name unknown . . . who had been . . . traced to the 
camp of the great body of the Sacs and Foxes, whom 
the chiefs had contrived to hold in neutrahty during the 
recent hostihties, influenced mainly by Keokuk, not a 
hereditary chief, and only a principal brave or warrior, 
the sense bearer, orator, and treasurer of the confed- 
eracy. The demand was communicated to this remark- 
able man. After a little musing, the painful truth of 
the story seemed to flash upon him. ... A young 
brave of some twenty years of age, the son of a dis- 
tinguished chief, had long sought to marry a handsome 
young squaw, the daughter of another famous chief; 
but the maiden repulsed the lover, applying to him the 
most opprobrious epithet, — squaw, — he never having 
taken a scalp, killed a grizzly bear, nor, by surprise, 
robbed an enemy of his arms, horse, or wife. . . . 
Her sympathies were, moreover, with Blackhawk, her 
only brother having run off with that reckless chief." 
Keokuk did not know all these facts, he only knew that 
the obdurate fair one had suddenly eaten her words and 
married her lover. By a process of detective reason- 
ing he arrived at his conclusions and promised to in- 
vestigate and report. " The next day he called at 
headquarters and whispered that his fears had proved 
prophetic ; that the happy bridegroom had, for the good 
of the confederacy, confessed himself to be the guilty 
party, and was at hand." 

Mindful of dramatic effect, however, Keokuk begged 
the General to make his demand for the murderer in 
full council. This was accordingly done with all the 
ceremony and parade possible. As soon as Scott's 
peroration " I demand the murderer ! " was interpreted, 
the young Apollo stood up and said, " I am the man ! " 
With a violent stamp of the foot Scott called upon 
" The Guard ! " and the youth was taken into custody. 



THE RED MENACE 257 

" When the blacksmith began to place and rivet irons 
upon him he struggled furiously. It took several of 
the guard to hold him down. He said he did not come 
forward to be ironed ; he did not wish to be tried, that 
he preferred to be shot at once." He was sent down 
to the Illinois court, and in spite of strong circumstan- 
tial evidence, plus sworn testimony that he had admitted 
the killing, the jury rendered a verdict of not guilty. 

But he had yet to pass another ordeal, — one of fire 
and water. " A swift horse, halfway between the 
court and the Mississippi, a few hundred yards off, had 
been provided for the occasion; but frontiersmen al- 
ways have their rifles in hand, and their horses ready. 
The lawyer hastened his client out of court, and gained 
for him a good start. ... In a minute, followed by 
some whizzing shots, he was in the saddle. In another 
horse and rider were plunged into the great * father of 
waters,' swimming side by side. Now came up furi- 
ously a dozen mounted riflemen, who threw their lead 
at the too distant game. The last news of the romantic 
Sac represented him as the happy father of a thriving 
family of young barbarians, by a more than Dacian 
mother, — all far beyond the Mississippi." 

General Scott does not explain the justice or the 
legality, under either Indian or American law, of this 
second putting of the prisoner's life in jeopardy for 
the same offense ; and the conviction steals upon us that 
the frontiersmen, whose unerring aim was a thing of 
note, chose to connive in a wild frolic with Justice and 
Love and give this trial an end worthy of its romantic 
beginning. 

According to their own ideals there were patriots 
among the Indians who saw only their side of the ques- 
tion, like some white patriots ; and when there was a 
question of right versus expediency were willing to 



258 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

give their own cause the benefit of the doubt. Keokuk, 
who urged the hero of Scott's tale to stand his trial, 
was one of these. Osceola, the Seminole halfbreed 
down in Florida, was another. Such half breeds were 
found more often in the South than in the North. If 
they remained with their mothers' people they were apt 
to cherish deadly hatred of the whites, and if, as in 
Osceola's case, this hatred was coupled with ability, it 
presaged danger. 

In Osceola's romantic story the wrongs of three races 
mingled. Many fugitive slaves had found shelter in- 
the Everglades and intermarried with the Indians, they 
and their children being known as Maroons. Osceola's 
wife was a maroon born in the swamps. He unwisely 
took her with him on a friendly visit to a United States 
fort, where she was claimed as a slave by the former 
owner of her mother and carried away. Osceola was 
placed in irons at the same time. He vowed vengeance, 
and on his release led his people in stubborn opposition 
to removal beyond the Mississippi, to which they had 
previously consented. In their Everglade stronghold 
they carried on a war of ambush and assassination for 
years until the tribe was well-nigh killed off and the 
cost in money had mounted up to more than three times 
the sum paid to Spain for the whole of Florida. 
While bearing a flag of truce, Osceola was treacher- 
ously seized and confined in Fort Moultrie where he 
died " after furnishing recitations to generations of 
schoolboys and sentiment to many of their elders," as 
an anti-Indian historian puts it. 

It was for love of country that the old Sac chieftain, 
" the indiscreet but honest Blackhawk," a rival and 
enemy of Keokuk, waged the futile war whose sole 
claim to memory now is that Lincoln served in it as a 
volunteer. " Rock River was a beautiful country. I 



THE RED MENACE 259 

liked my town, my cornfields, and the home of my 
people," was his explanation of why he fought for the 
land after it had been deeded away by treaty. Even 
though there be no morality in his speech, it is full of 
patriotism. 

His romantic story did not end even with death. At 
the end of his unsuccessful war he sought asylum with 
his friends, the Winnebagoes, who gave him up to the 
United States authorities. Confined at first at Jeffer- 
son Barracks, he was later taken to Washington, where 
he met Jackson eye to eye with unquenched spirit. " I 
am a man and you are another," he told him. He was 
conducted to Fort Monroe by a young officer, Jefferson 
Davis, whom Fate was to bring back as a prisoner to 
this same fortress many years after. Blackhawk was 
finally liberated and went west to die among his own 
people. He was buried " in gala dress, with cocked 
hat and sword, and the medals presented to him by two 
governments." But his grave was rifled and his bones 
exhibited to gaping sightseers, as his living body and 
unconquerable old soul had been to thousands during 
his sojourn in the East. Protests at last caused the 
skeleton to be turned over to the state authorities of 
Idaho, and finally a merciful fire put an end to its wan- 
derings. 

These were heroes after Indian standards, though 
perfidious and bloodthirsty after our own, but their 
aims were narrower and their patriotism less bold than 
that of the Crouching Panther Tecumseh, and Olli- 
wochici known as the Prophet, strong brothers of the 
triplets a Shawnee mother brought into the world about 
the time our Declaration of Independence was rousing 
the white race to its rebellion. All three of these In- 
dian babies grew to manhood, but the fame of two of 
them has blotted the name of the third from history. 



26o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Tecumseh, daring and energetic, an orator and a 
consistent hater of the white man, added to his purely 
Indian virtues a broad grasp of politics and a skill in 
reading men that might well have made him the envy 
of statesmen of any race. He saw that by purchase 
and force the whites were driving the original owners 
of the soil steadily westward, taking here a little and 
there a little and never giving back one inch. Like 
Pontiac he had a vision of empire; like other Indians 
he believed that the wrongs his people had suffered 
blotted out treaty obligations, and he saw that they 
must strike at once or be willing to give up their homes 
forever. 

His dream was of an Indian republic stretching from 
Canada to Florida, in which tribes counted for little 
but warriors for much. To them was to belong the 
land, and with them was to rest the final power in a 
great central congress of Indian representatives. Olli- 
wochici seconded his brother's plans and supplemented 
his talents with his own equally important gift of 
prophecy. He became a great medicine man, known 
far and wide, holding communion with the unseen 
world, interpreting its decrees, foretelling earthquakes, 
and explaining comets and the visitations of nature in 
accordance with his brother's needs. 

They made their stronghold at a strategic point in 
the western part of Indiana, within striking distance 
of Fort Dearborn, Fort Wayne, and old Vincennes, a 
spot from which by water, when the time was ripe, they 
could devastate the whole Ohio Valley. Here they 
made a town, and planted corn and talked peace, setting 
an example of sobriety to their white neighbors by 
avoiding the use of alcohol. This was in 1808. Not- 
withstanding their exemplary conduct, Indian agents 
and settlers became uneasy and sent word to the mili- 



THE RED MENACE 261 

tary authorities that the Prophet's village was not as 
peaceful as it seemed. 

A treaty of 1809, that deprived the red men of their 
last hunting grounds in Indiana, further excited the 
several tribes that by this time had joined Tecumseh's 
confederacy. But British traders, seeing how a wide- 
spread Indian defection could be turned to their own 
advantage in the war they felt was at hand, urged the 
Indians to await their signal; and to them probably be- 
longs the credit of delaying the outbreak two years 
longer. 

Meanwhile Tecumseh, mindful of the strained rela- 
tions between English and Americans, delivered his 
ultimatum to General Harrison. He wanted to be his 
friend. He had no fault to find with the Great Father 
at Washington except in the matter of land. The 
United States must give up the recently purchased lands 
and promise to make no such purchases in future with- 
out the consent of the allied tribes. In return Tecum- 
seh would help the United States soldiers in their war 
against England. Otherwise he would join the Eng- 
lish. Harrison told him the Government would make 
no such bargain and the interview ended. The winter 
of 1810—11 passed without serious outbreak, but there 
was unrest with a growing belief that Tecumseh's acts 
were merely a part of the larger British scheme. Te- 
cumseh and Harrison held another futile interview, at 
the end of which the chief and his suite of twenty 
braves passed southward to visit Southern tribes, talk- 
ing peace and inciting to war with consummate di- 
plomacy. 

Harrison began to enlist volunteers and to send them 
to occupy the new Indian purchase, and the inevitable 
clash occurred in the battle of Tippecanoe on Novem- 
ber 7, 181 1, fought for two hours in the darkness of 



262 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

early morning within a short distance of the Prophet's 
own village. The aim of the Indians, firing by the 
light of the soldiers' dying camp fires, was deadly, but 
with the coming of day they were driven into sur- 
rounding swamps and victory was completed by de- 
stroying the Indian town. 

War with Great Britain did not formally begin until 
June of the following year, but Tecumseh returned 
from the South soon after the battle of Tippecanoe 
and the series of murders and massacres that occurred 
from the month of April on, was laid at his door. In 
January, 1813, the massacre at the River Raisin of 
American prisoners surrendered to the British roused 
popular fury, and when in October the opportunity 
came to try conclusions with Tecumseh and his follow- 
ers at the battle of the Thames, it was with the cry, 
" Remember the River Raisin ! " that our soldiers went 
into the fight, fired with an avenging zeal that passed 
the bounds of humanity. 

The winning of that battle finished the work against 
the British that had been begun by Perry on Lake Erie ; 
and it crushed forever the hope of a Northwest Indian 
confederacy. Tecumseh, the life and inspiration of 
that idea, was dead. Kentuckians had been the princi- 
pal victims on the River Raisin, and Kentuckians took 
a revenge as barbarous as any ever perpetrated by 
savages. Tecumseh's body was found after the battle, 
lying on a heap of more than thirty slaughtered war- 
riors. At sight of it the Kentuckians, under Colonel 
Johnson, went wild and fell upon and mutilated it, 
cutting long strips of skin from the thighs for razor 
strops in memory, they said, of the River Raisin. Such 
vindictiveness may be easily explained but not con- 
doned. In the feeling of the time, however, the killing 
of Tecumseh was accounted a praiseworthy act. It 



THE RED MENACE 263 

was accredited to Colonel Johnson personally and used 
as an argument for electing him Vice-President of the 
United States. 

It must be admitted that championship of the Indians 
as a cruelly persecuted race has always been strongest 
in those parts of the country where contact with them 
is lacking. On the other hand, unqualified blame is 
equally to be taken with reservation. Even those 
whose friends or families suffered the unspeakable 
horrors of Indian raids, are apt to end their sweep- 
ing denunciations by recalling with admiration at least 
one red man, personally known, as a noble type, physi- 
cally and mentally. 

" Elder Brother," said a Chippewa chief in sur- 
rendering land in southern Ohio, " you ask me who 
were the true owners of the land now ceded to the 
United States. In answer I tell you, if any nations 
should call themselves owners of it they would be guilty 
of falsehood; our claim to it is equal. Our Elder 
Brother has conquered it." 

The right or wrong of the whole dark question lies 
there. The land belonged to them ; the Elder Brother 
has conquered it. 

Given the component parts of the problem, — dif- 
fering standards, two centuries of mutual wrongs and 
misunderstandings, the barbarous cruelties practised by 
the Indians, and the role the white race was to play 
upon this continent, — there seems in retrospect, to have 
been no other possible outcome. It was a relentless 
working of Fate whereby she molded the fortune of 
nations regardless of misery or merit in individuals. 
Perhaps we can do no better than to call it Destiny, 
and pass on to episodes more cheerful and more flatter- 
ing than this tragic record that spells the annihilation 
of a race. 



CHAPTER XIII 

WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 

THE Osage Indians have a symbol to express 
their idea of woman's place in the scheme of 
creation. A circle represents the world. ' In- 
side the circle is a square which stands for the home. 
Inside the square is a cross typifying the four winds. 
And in the very center of the four winds sits a spider 
whose weaving they carry to the uttermost parts of 
the earth. The Indian Arachne was content to work 
in silence from the center of her little universe, but 
whether she was less boastful in spirit than her Greek 
sister who shall say ? 

We are prone to think of her as downtrodden and 
patient only because she had not the spirit to be other- 
wise. Yet the short space of our white man's history 
in America afifords glimpses of more than one dusky 
Helen for whom wars were waged, of Indian queens 
respected in council, and of Indian prophetesses who 
were veritable furies incarnate. We know that there 
were tribes where property rights rested solely in the 
wife ; and where the blood money exacted for killing a 
woman was much greater than for killing a man. 

There were also Indian women whose loyalty to our 
white men it ill becomes us to forget. The fair and 
frail Caroline, who warned Major Gladwyn of Pon- 
tiac's treachery, was one whose apostacy damns her 
forever in the hunting grounds of an Indian hereafter. 

264 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 265 

Sacajawea, the Bird Woman, had the hves and for- 
tunes of the whole expedition in her care as she guided 
Lewis and Clark over the mountains. 

And we must not forget the gentle savage of many 
aliases, Lady Rebecca or Matoaca or Pocahontas, who 
was kinder to white men than they to her. Captain 
John Smith showed little gratitude for the service she 
rendered him. A few years later she was bought from 
some Indian " friends," for the ignominious price 
of a copper kettle, by Captain Argall, another Eng- 
lishman, and held as hostage; and later still she was 
married to a third, John Rolfe, how willingly we do not 
know. He took her across the cold sea to a cold and 
alien England, where the white plague laid icy fingers 
upon her and claimed her for its own. 

The int-erest foreigners display in our national atti- 
tude toward women centers in the fact that it reverses 
that of Europe, where a woman must marry to attain 
a certain degree of freedom. De Tocqueville wrote 
that the unmarried American woman was as free as 
air; but that the American wife lived in her husband's 
house " as in a cloister," — which was truer at that 
time than now. Legend has it that a young girl, Mary 
Chilton by name, was the first to step ashore from the 
history-laden Mayftower;, and popular belief, abroad 
at least, pictures the young American girl in the fore- 
front of every movement, invading with buoyant ig- 
norance regions that even the angels shun. 

Like all exaggerations there is " something in it." 
Heredity is in it for one thing, for in considering the 
unique position their sex has held on this continent we 
must not forget that our foremothers were picked 
women. They were not necessarily wise or amiable 
or always good, but they were capable and they were 
not weaklings. Even the hundred and fifty " maids " 



266 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

sent out to the Virginia colony and eagerly bought, to 
state it brutally, by young planter-adventurers for one 
hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco each, were 
women of courage, since they were willing to cross one 
stormy sea to embark upon another with untried part- 
ners. 

The conditions these venturesome foremothers of 
ours encountered in America fostered self-reliance. 
Hands were few, needs many. They met each duty 
when it presented itself as best they could. It is curi- 
ous, in looking over the record, to see how decidedly 
progressive the colonial women were. Mistress Mar- 
garet Brent, kinswoman and executrix of Lord Cal- 
vert, Governor of Maryland, who died in 1647, boldly 
claimed a vote in the General Assembly as part of her 
right as administrator of his estate. This she was re- 
fused, but the chief court of the province allowed her 
to appear before it to defend her private interests and 
those of her brother as well as those of the Calvert 
property. Thus she practised as attorney 220 years 
before Mrs. Arabella Mansfield, the pioneer woman 
lawyer of the United States, was admitted in 1869 to 
the bar of Iowa by an examining board that gallantly 
stretched the words of the statute " white male citizen " 
to include an excellently equipped female. 

Women preachers have carried inspiration and dis- 
cord among us from the day Anne Hutchinson set her 
foot upon Massachusetts soil in 1634. Twenty years 
after she arrived, a mother and son appeared at Reho- 
both and worked together, he as physician, she as mid- 
wife, " to answer to the town's necessity which was 
great." And in every community there were sturdy 
old women versed in simple remedies who traveled 
through storms by day and by night, ministering to the 
sick, comforting the dying, and helping to bring the 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 267 

babies into the world. America's first professional 
poet was a woman, Anne Dudley, wife of Simon Brad- 
street, Governor of Massachusetts; who, like many a 
better poet, wrote her verses in " hours curtailed from 
her sleep and other refreshments." 

That women of an early colonial period expressed 
their minds and passions openly and freely in public, 
the ducking-stool and other man-made correctives bear 
witness. How much such devices had to do with 
silencing their voices, those who have studied the sex 
longest will be least able to tell. For some reason 
silence became a fashion that lasted long. Then, al- 
most two hundred years to a day from the time when 
those first American ladies argued law and practised 
medicine, their descendants bestirred themselves in 
clubs and conventions, by tens and by hundreds, to 
wring from the men acknowledgment of their " right " 
to do the very things their great-great-grandmothers 
had done single-handed. The men meantime, having 
become accustomed to silence, — in public at least, — 
were loath to give up what they deemed an advantage. 
" And that 's the way the trouble began." 

The intervening hush was more apparent than real. 
It might be called a conspiracy of silence, for in private 
women went right on doing things, often aided and 
abetted by their male relatives. Abundant evidence 
proves that American women of revolutionary times 
labored in many fields; and in spite of the fact that 
schools worthy of the name were not open to them, and, 
as Mrs. John Adams says, " it was fashionable to 
ridicule feminine learning," the studious managed in 
some way to master studies that school boards would 
have opposed their attempting. 

Miss Hannah Adams, one of the first American 
women to make literature her profession, was prevented 



268 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

by ill health from attending such poor schools as were 
available to her. To earn her daily bread, while writ- 
ing about history and religion, she spun and sewed and 
made bobbin lace, — and taught young gentlemen 
Latin! The mother of Chancellor Wythe of Virginia 
was able to teach her son Greek; and the Adams men 
took a distinct pride in the literary attainments of their 
women. 

Such women, on their part, did not hesitate to throw 
the weight of their private advice into politics. John 
Adams complimented his wife on the appositeness of 
her political maxims, though it must be confessed he 
paid small heed to her admonition to remember the 
women in forming the new government " and be more 
generous and honorable to them than your ancestors 
have been. Do not put unlimited power in the hands 
of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants 
if they could." 

Mrs. Mercy Warren, one of the first advocates of 
separation from the mother country, corresponded with 
many of the political leaders, " teaching them their 
duty," and calling their attention in pungent words to 
the truth that liberty and the pursuit of happiness 
should be the lot of all mankind. She was a sister of 
James Otis who thundered " taxation without repre- 
sentation is tyranny," and we are told, she " had more 
political wisdom." La Rochefoucauld wrote of her, 
" Seldom has a woman in any age acquired such as- 
cendency by the mere force of a powerful intellect." 

It is said that almost one- fourth of the newspapers 
published in the colonies in 1776 were edited by women, 
and that one of these was the first journal to publish 
the Declaration of Independence. But, after all, there 
were comparatively few women, or men either, in the 
colonies qualified to teach Latin or to publish a news- 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 269 

paper. Education might go with patriotism, but it 
was by no means a necessary part of it. 

That women did not lag behind the men in devotion 
to the cause, we know, not only through tales of law- 
less and loyal girls in male attire who fought at the 
front, as a few women will in every war; but through 
endless family traditions of sacrifice and courage, of 
cherished pewter melted into bullets, and of the women 
of Puritan repression who sought their husbands in 
the field, disengaged their hands from the plow, took 
the reins, and with scarcely a glance of farewell went 
on with the furrow. To these are added the stories of 
the Hot Water War in Pennsylvania, where women 
poured that fluid and their wrath upon Authority come 
to collect the window tax ; and of other spirited and 
often useless expressions of militant energy; all going 
to prove that the women of the period, educated and 
uneducated alike, felt a sense of shoulder-to-shoulder 
responsibility and equality with the men, tempered with 
the subtle arrogance of the Osage women. A touch 
of this, by the way, is to be found in the simple answer 
Washington's mother is said to have made to Lafayette 
when the latter broke into eulogy of her son : 

" I am not surprised at what George has done, for 
he was always a very good boy." 

One more revolutionary story, admittedly apocryphal 
and very modern, is too much to the point to be passed 
over. It is that " prose epic in four books, the joint 
production of two boys," that Jane Addams says is the 
way Hull House thinks Betsey Ross made the flag. 

" Book one. Wunst the soldiers fighting King 
George found out that they had to have a flag. The 
soldier that thought of it first said, ' Bill, we ain't got 
no flag,' and Bill says it was so. 

" Book two. So they went to General George 



270 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Washington, the Father of his Country, an' they says 
to General- George Washington, ' General Washington, 
we ain't got no flag. Ain't it fierce ? ' And General 
George Washington says, ' Yes, that 's so, we ain't got 
no flag. Ain't it fierce? ' 

" Book three. So General George Washington, the 
Father of his Country, went to Betsey Ross who lived 
on the corner of Beacon and Chestnut Streets, and Gen- 
eral George Washington says, ' Betsey, we ain't got no 
flag. Ain't it fierce ? ' 

" Book four. And General George Washington 
says, ' Ain't it fierce? ' again, three times. And Betsey 
Ross she says, ' I should say it was fierce. General 
Washington, the Father of his Country ! Here, you 
hold the baby, and I '11 make one.' " 

In the march westward American women left neither 
their heroism nor their feminine traits behind them. 
As often as pioneer conditions were renewed, they re- 
newed their strength to meet them. Not alone through 
the anxieties of Indian menace, but in the never-ending 
warfare against the wilderness, they were the compan- 
ions of the men; and just this sense of comradeship 
nerved them, from ocean to ocean, to withstand the 
inexpressible monotony and hardship of a pioneer 
woman's lot. Since it was usually the less educated 
and well-to-do who strove to better their condition by 
moving on, we hear little about women lawyers or 
women poets among them ; but no family with pioneer 
traditions is too poor to be without its story of one or 
a dozen ancestresses who outwitted savages, tilled fields 
in the absence of the men, and guided their families 
through times of stress with brilliant fortitude. Some- 
times, as in the case of Lincoln's mother, it was the 
wife who taught the husband to write his name. 

Yellowed family letters tell of almost unbelievable 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 271 

indecencies, of filthy inns, and drunken wretches met 
on the roads where pioneer conditions were already 
past. In other letters agony over a child dying for 
lack of medical care throbs through every ill-spelt 
word. " The waggoner was hired by the hundred- 
weight & could not stop unless I paid him for the time 
that he stoped & for the Keeping of the horses that I 
could not affoard to do. So we were obliged to keep 
on," says one of these. " We were now on the Alle- 
ghny Mountain & a most horrid rode. . . . The 
waggon golted so " that the father took the poor sick 
baby in his arms and walked, a compassionate young 
bachelor of the party relieving him of his burden when 
fatigue overcame him. At a house where they break- 
fasted the child was taken with convulsion after con- 
vulsion. They appealed to the landlady for aid, 
" She said she did not love to see a person in a fitt but 
she came into the room. Polly ask her if she new what 
was good for a child in a fitt she said no & immediately 
left the room & shut the door after her & came no more 
into the room." But her husband remained ; and when 
Polly, the poor mother, voiced her fear that the baby 
would die, answered " in a verry lite manner " that it 
would save the trouble of carrying it farther. Out- 
raged, the parents took up their child and " walked on 
to the next house ware we come up with our company 
. . . the Man of the house gave it some drops that 
stoped the fitt he handed me a vial of the dropps, — 
gave directions how to use them the child had no more 
fitts but seemed to be stupid all day ... his face and 
eyes appeared not to come in shape as before." They 
carried it many more miles that day, " up and down 
the most tedious hills as I ever saw," walking until well 
into the night to reach shelter, and next morning at 
dawn the father saw that the poor baby's journey would 



2J2 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

soon be over. " Polly was obliged to go rite off as 
soon as his eyes were closed for the waggoner would 
not stop." The father stayed to see his little son laid 
in a grave that the man of the house sent Negroes to dig 
" ware he had hurried several strangers that dyed 
acrossing the mountain his family all followed the corps 
to the grave black & white & appeared much affected 
. . . thus my dear pearetits you see we are deprived of 
the child we brought with us & we no not whather the 
one we left is dead or alive. I beg you to rite & let me 
no Polly cant bear her name mentioned without shed- 
ding tears." 

At best the journey was a trial of strength. At 
worst it was torment for body and spirit. Truly, suf- 
ferings more cruel than Indians could inflict lurked on 
that old Braddock's Road to the West. 

With every advance from pioneer life toward ease, 
the round of women's activities grew more circum- 
scribed. This was not all due to cares they found or 
invented for themselves in their more comfortable 
homes, or to the gross selfishness of the men. In no 
small measure it came about through the men's desire 
to protect the loyal and plucky companions of their 
strenuous days from some of the buffetings of fortune. 
Every man worth his salt was supposed to be able to 
take care of the women of his household; to provide 
for all their material wants and to shield them from 
harm. If a woman had to go out into the world and 
earn her living, it was a reflection on the ability or the 
manliness of her male relatives. Even socially it be- 
came the fashion for women never to go about alone 
or to do things independently. Wives having greater 
household cares either stayed at home " as in a clois- 
ter " or went into society in company with their hus- 
bands. Young girls with more of freedom from re- 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 273 

sponsibilities, had greater liberty, and secure in the 
chivalry of the whole male sex went in company with 
any man who might turn into a desirable husband. 
Socially a chaperone was unnecessary, a male escort 
indispensable. The girl who had to go alone to a 
dance was sadly unpopular. The woman who traveled 
alone, except under the pressure of extreme necessity, 
was " inexcusable." In the West this feeling was 
peculiarly strong. Even to-day a Western man is apt 
to resent the bachelor maid's assumption of self-suffi- 
ciency in the matter of latch-keys and midnight prowl- 
ings. 

With purely American variations it was a swinging 
back to the old chivalric attitude of the knight toward 
his lady, — just as ideally attractive, just as abnormal, 
and as unsatisfactory in its working out. But it was 
insidiously flattering, and the change coming little by 
little, women slipped into it with a comfortable sense 
of well being, as if they were reentering a lost king- 
dom, instead of walking blindfold into a generous and 
uninteresting prison. 

Feminine education and ideals gravitated toward 
virtuous insipidity. American women of leisure read 
few books and rarely invaded the reading rooms of 
libraries. They went little to the theater; and never, 
if they were women of position, to such questionable 
outdoor resorts as the Elysian Fields. Indeed, the out- 
door world was supposed to be a rude and boisterous 
place, unsuited alike to feminine complexions and 
powers of endurance. Their sphere was narrowed 
within four or at most eight walls, the four of their 
church and the four of their homes, within which 
they specialized in the domestic virtues. 

" A genteel person, a simple nature, sensibility, 
cheerfulness, delicacy, softness, affability, good man- 



274 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ners, regular habits, skill in fancy work, and a fund of 
hidden genteel learning " were the characteristics most 
admired on both sides of the Atlantic, for this was at 
the beginning of the Victorian reign in England. 

The popularity of this kind of pseudo-elegance and 
an increase in wealth encouraged " finishing schools " 
to supply the veneer permitted by the distressing code 
of manners. Schools where the young ladies " re- 
tired " at night because it was vulgar to go to bed; 
where they embroidered biblical subjects in chenille; 
learned sixty lace stitches; studied a little French; 
learned to strum a little music; and where occasionally 
a very lucky girl had the chance, — and embraced it, — 
to elope with a red-blooded, susceptible young parson. 

That " hidden " loophole in the list of feminine per- 
fections, was a boon and a blessing, not overlooked 
by the women whose impulse to meddle in larger affairs 
could not be restrained. They pulled concealed wires, 
or wrote under assumed names, unashamed of the act, 
though they might weep with vexation at being found 
out; or if they were too straightforward for conceal- 
ment and still must write, proved their respectability 
and " worked their passage into authorship by first 
compiling a cookery book." 

A conscientious endeavor on the part of the less 
gifted to live up to the new artificial standards produced 
occasional freakish results and a few instances of that 
inconceivable stupidity over which Mrs. Trollope 
gloated when she wrote about the women who slipped 
furtively in to see a collection of antique casts when no 
one was looking, and vetoed the suggestion for a picnic 
with the reproof that " it was considered very indeli- 
cate for ladies and gentlemen to sit down together on 
the grass." 

Only a few indulged in such nonsense. On the 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 275 

whole, our women were too sensible and too energetic 
to enjoy the role of useless fine lady; and being ex- 
ceedingly capable, if not very progressive, did wonders 
with the limited amount of education permitted them, 
accomplishing a prodigious amount of work in what- 
ever they were allowed to do. They brought up many 
children; cooked or superintended the cooking of count- 
less meals; took as large a part as talent and custom 
sanctioned in the activities of town and church ; and in 
addition managed to snatch stolen half hours with 
needle or pen or cherished water colors for soul-vital- 
izing, creative work. 

The namby-pambyism of which Mrs. Trollope com- 
plained found its cure in the awakening social con- 
sciousness and the desire for civic and national better- 
ment that took possession of men and women alike 
about the year 1830. Societies to reform anything and 
everything had always a strong hold on the American 
fancy. Now women found in banding together a 
potent force to use for their own advantage as well as 
for the regeneration of mankind. With philanthropy 
as their ultimate aim they dared demand more than they 
otherwise might have felt justified in doing; and before 
their earnestness and spirit artificial barriers of pro- 
priety went down one after another. A geographical 
frontier had existed from the first where women held 
to the bitter-sweet ways of comradeship and crushing 
labor. Now there came to be a frontier of the spirit 
where women made claim to their lost place. Being 
refused in half-shocked, half-laughing protest, they re- 
solved to conquer it for themselves, — to fight against 
the men if not allowed to fight with them. 

It required courage, and it must be added not a little 
help from husbands and brothers who could not with- 
hold admiration of individual women for the very inde- 



276 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

pendence they condemned in the mass. The Kentucky 
lady, successful manager of a model farm and long a 
prize winner at county fairs, who gathered an escort of 
gentlemen about her carriage and with a woman by her 
side to share the criticism, nerved herself to go to the 
fairgrounds and see her own display of horses and 
cows, was a reformer in her way quite as radical as the 
Eastern ladies who felt " a woe upon them " to cut off 
their hair and practise dress reform. 

No amount of fervor for reform in dress or any- 
thing else could obscure the feminine charm of those 
plucky and progressive women of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. " My dear, you never looked so pretty as in your 
little checked silk bloomers," said a gallant husband who 
did his courting under the depressing influence of that 
fortunately fleeting phase of American earnestness. 
Those of us who knew his wife with her soft gray 
curls and her soft matronly gray frocks found it hard 
to believe him ; but we would have staked our eyes on 
the proposition that her youth could have lent grace 
to the most uncompromising costume ever sewed to- 
gether. 

One step led to another, and, as so often happens, to 
most unexpected results. The varied movements for 
reform gravitated inevitably toward the overpowering 
issue of freedom versus slavery. On this great ques- 
tion the influence of women was more welcome and less 
laughed at than on many others. But having been 
granted a small inch they claimed a very large ell. It 
was a protest against slavery that resulted in the Amer- 
ican Woman's Rights movement of to-day. In 1840 
an international antislavery meeting was held in Lon- 
don, to which all antislavery societies throughout the 
world were invited to send delegates. By that time 
America had become somewhat accustomed, though not 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY ^yj 

converted, to the idea of women taking part in such 
gatherings. Across the Atlantic, however, it was still 
most unwomanly for them to speak in public or even to 
sit upon a platform. When six or more of the dele- 
gates sent by America turned out to be ladies, London 
was rocked to its center. They were reviled and al- 
most mobbed in the streets, and pulpit and press vied 
in denunciation. The vote to admit them to the Con- 
gress failed by a large majority. Two of the Ameri- 
can men sent as delegates refused to take their seats 
if the women were excluded, and attended the meetings 
only as silent spectators in the galleries. 

The history of slavery was probably little changed 
by that London gathering; but this by-product of the 
meeting grew to a movement that has been felt the 
world around. Up to that time all discussion of the 
equal rights of women had been incidental to some- 
thing else. Now it became an issue in itself. 

At the close of that uncomfortable ten days Lucretia 
Mott, one of the delegates excluded, and Elizabeth 
Cady Stanton, bride of one of the gentlemen admitted, 
agreed to combat boldly the accepted idea of woman's 
place, and to hold a Woman's Rights convention in 
America to educate the people. " Demand the utmost 
and you will get something," was the advice of a wily 
friend. They carried out their idea at Mrs. Stanton's 
home in Seneca Falls, New York, in July, 1848, and 
reaped a harvest of ridicule and social ostracism. Two 
years later a " national " Woman's Rights convention 
came together in New York, with delegates from nine 
States ; and the decade that intervened before the open- 
ing of Civil War saw a steady if slow decrease in 
opposition. 

During the great conflict all efforts in this direction 
were put aside ; but the confidence women had gained, 



278 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and their experience in working together stood their 
countrymen in good stead. Preparing supphes for the 
wounded, nursing in camp and hospital, caring for 
famihes left destitute by war, the colossal sanitary 
fairs, and other money-making enterprises undertaken 
and carried out by women with excellent business man- 
agement, were an immediate tangible result. The 
world-wide Red Cross has been its ultimate outcome 
in philanthropy; and the revolution still in progress 
in social and economic conditions its inevitable se- 
quence in the fields of politics and business. 

Concentrating attention upon one point, to the ex- 
clusion of everything else, after the manner of crystal- 
gazers, brings about astonishing results in vision and 
prophecy, but at the expense of proportion and com- 
monsense. It is well to remember that the broadening 
field of women's activities is no triumph of altruism. 
Cupidity had as much to do with it as conversion. Be- 
cause women would work for lower wages than men in 
the newly opened factories and because they would 
consent to teach children for less money were un- 
answerable arguments for making them mill hands and 
training them as teachers. With growing freedom has 
come growing oppression of conditions. The best of 
mills to-day are very different from those white-cur- 
tained, flower-decked affairs at Lowell, whose young 
" ladies " turned out in white frocks and green para- 
sols, high combs, and silk stockings, to greet Jackson 
on his tour through New England. Those girls came 
from wholesome if monotonous farm life and returned 
to it after they had earned money for their wedding 
outfits, and while employed in the mills found time and 
strength after working hours for literary labors. 
Doubtless even that picture has taken on touches of 
idealism with the lapse of time. 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 279 

However that may be, it is certain that the need for 
watchfulness and wisdom among the leaders of women 
did not grow less with the years. Whether they are 
more efficient or happier now than before they ex- 
changed the routine of the kitchen for the treadmill of 
modern industry, is quite outside the field of discus- 
sion. They are better educated, they have more 
liberty; and their problem has become infinitely more 
complicated. 

We may gain a fair impression of the average in- 
telligence of the women of the first half of the century 
if we pass by those who were born great and those who 
never achieved greatness, to consider briefly a few who 
had greatness thrust upon them in the course of politics. 
In such a group would come not only wives and daugh- 
ters of Presidents and statesmen, but some who served 
their country by marrying foreigners, like the daugh- 
ters of Governor Clinton and of Samuel Osgood, the 
first Postmaster-General, who contrived between them 
to quiet that vain little pouter pigeon of a French 
Minister, Genet, " hot headed, all imagination, and no 
judgment," who intrigued under Washington's very 
eyes but was subdued by those of the ladies, married 
each in turn, and " subsided into a useful and public- 
spirited American citizen." 

Nor can we forget the women like Mrs. Nicholson 
of Maryland, of whom we know little save that she sat 
all night and all day in the lobby of Congress to minis- 
ter to her sick husband and guide his hand as he wrote 
ballot after ballot while the House wavered in its 
choice between Jefferson and Burr. 

Mrs. Washington, always plainly but suitably 
dressed, receiving her guests with formal courtesy and 
returning their visits punctiliously after three days, was 
never so happy as when clicking her knitting-needles 



28o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and overseeing the work of her household at Mount 
Vernon. Nobody spoke of her sprightly conversa- 
tion, or remembered her reading or discussing a book ; 
but she was typical of a larger and better-loved class 
than her successor, Mrs. Adams, who had a frosty 
manner and a ready pen, though a warm heart as her 
letters testify. 

Mrs. Madison made a lasting place for herself in the 
political annals of her country through sheer kindli- 
ness. Though her slaves preferred to take their small 
requests and troubles to " Marse Jim " rather than to 
her, free white people of whatever age or sex had but 
one opinion about her. Congress voted her a seat on 
the floor of the Senate, an honor accorded to no other 
woman. President Tyler's five-year-old granddaugh- 
ter adored her ; and Madison's old mother at the age of 
ninety-seven, sitting in her room so eloquent of bygone 
days, with her knitting held in slender fingers like 
polished ivory, looked lovingly at this daughter-in-law 
of hers, so full of vigor and said, " She is my mother 
now, and tenderly cares for all my wants." 

Mrs. Monroe was a woman of different type, culti- 
vated but without social gifts. She had been known as 
la belle Americaine when her husband served as Minis- 
ter to France, and had saved from the wreck of her 
youth and health, her low voice, her grace of move- 
ment, and a desire to appear younger than she really 
was. Like many other ladies of her generation and 
ours she seemed to think paint a part of her costume. 
Society, spoiled by Mrs. Madison's democratic friend- 
liness, highly resented Mrs. Monroe's withdrawal into 
the formality of her official position. 

Mrs. John O. Adams was scarcely more popular. 
The fact of her English birth was used against her 




M - 






j*^. i<#«^ 




WINFIELD SCOTT, BREVET LIEUTENANT-GENERAL, U.S.A. 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 281 

husband as campaign material ; and while he was secre- 
tary of state she gave offense by refusing to make first 
calls, — as a matter of principle. " She did not re- 
quire any lady to call upon her," she said. She had 
unusual experiences for an American woman of her 
generation. She lived five years in Russia and on leav- 
ing it traveled to France alone through regions deso- 
lated by war and dangerously infested by brigands. 
In Paris she saw the furore of the people for Napoleon, 
when, after the flight of the Bourbons, they literally 
lifted him in their arms and carried him to the Tuiler- 
ies. Like the elder Mrs. Adams, she had a ready pen, 
writing verses for the amusement of her friends and 
translating Plato from the French to the satisfaction of 
her bookish husband. 

In Tyler's time the country was treated to the spec- 
tacle, distressing or charming according to the point of 
view, of an old President very much in love with a 
young wife. The first Mrs. Tyler died in the White 
House and her duties descended upon a married daugh- 
ter, one of many children with whom the pair had been 
blessed. This seemed fitting and the country rested 
in the belief that whatever Tyler's political vagaries, 
his domestic concerns would move with middle-aged 
decorum. But in February, 1844, occurred the tragedy 
on board the Princeton, when the great gun called the 
Peacemaker burst, killing several of a distinguished 
party that was being entertained on the fine new war- 
ship, among them the secretary of state and the secre- 
tary of the navy. The President's great kindness to 
the two daughters of Mr. Gardiner, another victim, 
speedily merged into feelings of a warmer character for 
Miss Julia, the elder. A few weeks later he confided 
to a friend that he was soon to be married. The friend 



282 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

unwisely remonstrated on the score of age, " Pooh, 
pooh," Tyler chuckled. " Why, my dear sir, I am just 
full in my prime." 

The wedding took place in New York, quietly, in 
an attempt to keep details out of the newspapers ; but a 
national salute thundered from forts and shipping ; and 
in this day when we do things differently if not better, 
it is amusing to read that the wedding trip was an ex- 
cursion around the bay on the ferryboat Essex. Cen- 
ter of all eyes and of much criticism the bride enjoyed 
her few brief months of splendor, clad in velvet with 
ostrich feathers in her hair, and then retired with her 
elderly husband to the Tyler estate in Virginia where in 
her turn she presented him with many children. 

Andrew Jackson's honest. God-fearing wife was 
" Aunt Rachel " to all the young people of her acquaint- 
ance. " Plain " in manner and almost illiterate, she 
had two great requisites for social success, a genuine 
interest in people and the faculty of remembering 
names. She was also eloquent in spite of her lack of 
schooling and had an earnest, upright nature that im- 
posed itself upon her husband's to curb and regulate his 
more violent temper. She influenced him for good 
from beyond the grave, — and that in itself shows how 
strong and sweet a woman she must have been. She 
died only three months before his inauguration. Much 
talk and no little malice had gone into speculating how 
she would behave in the White House. Gossip had it 
that she had tried vigorously if vainly to reform the 
Catholic ways of Pensacola while her husband was 
Governor of Florida. The ladies of Tennessee, deter- 
mined that she should at least have clothes suited to her 
station, prepared an elaborate outfit that was to have 
been presented at a great celebration at Christmas time. 
She died within a few hours of the time set for the 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 283 

presentation. The story of her funeral, — of the fren- 
zied slave woman who threw herself into the grave, de- 
manding to be buried with her mistress, and of Jackson 
rousing from his stony grief to comfort and reason 
with her, — forms a picture of slave days and ways 
that cannot be read unmoved. 

According to Senator Benton, Van Buren was made 
Vice-President by a woman, that lively Bellona 
whose cause Jackson so warmly espoused, and whose 
unlikeness to ladies of exemplary manners but color- 
less personality then in society gave her perhaps greater 
fame than her impulsive actions merited. Society was 
very conventional. Old Madam Calhoun used to say 
that she and Andrew Jackson were the only people of 
independence in Washington. Madam Calhoun's in- 
dependence seems to have taken the form of religious 
zeal and the wish to impose her own views upon others. 

Calhoun's daughter was one of the brilliant young 
women of society. " I well remember the clearness 
with which she presented the Southern view of the 
situation, and the ingenuity with which she parried 
such objections as I was able to present," wrote Josiah 
Quincy. " The fashionable ladies of the South had 
received the education of political thought and discus- 
sion to a degree unknown among their sisters of the 
North. * She can read bad French novels and play a 
few tunes on the piano,' said a cynical friend of mine 
concerning a young lady who had completed a costly 
education in a fashionable school in New York ; * but 
upon my word, she does not know whether she is living 
in a monarchy or a republic' The sneer would never 
have applied to the corresponding class at the South." 

This is quite true. Politics and society were almost 
one in the South. Girls went earlier into society and 
were more in the company of men. In fact, they were 



284 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

apt to receive what higher education they acquired in 
their homes, from tutors or their own fathers and 
brothers, whose chief interest lay in pohtics ; and being 
no whit behind their fathers or their Northern sisters 
in mental astuteness they took readily to this kind of 
teaching. It might be said that the chief intellectual 
training of New England women lay along lines of 
theology and that of Southern women in politics, with 
excursions into the field of classical literature from 
both sections. In practical training the New England 
woman learned to do things with her own hands. The 
Southern woman, mistress of many slaves, was often 
untrained in this respect, but she learned to direct a 
large retinue and exercised her power with rare execu- 
tive ability. This kind of experience aided her to grasp 
political problems that are of similar nature but on a 
larger scale. Much has been said and written about the 
efficiency of our New England mothers, and the energy 
of Western women, but comparatively little about the 
same efficiency developed in other directions by the 
women of the South. 

This is quite enough about political ladies to show 
that while only a few were specially gifted, all were 
efficient and some were clever; but a brief quotation 
from Ampere's " Promenade en Amerique " may be 
pardoned. He is describing the great three days' 
celebration at Boston on the occasion of the formal 
opening of a railroad between the United States and 
Canada, — the same at which Fredrika Bremer saw the 
" grand humorous procession." The President and 
Lord Elgin were there, with many lesser dignitaries, 
and there were many imposing functions. 

" Le soir j'ai ete dans le beau monde, " says Ampere. 
" Le President a paru dans un salon, ou il ne s'etait pas 
trouve autant d'uni formes anglais depuis la guerre de 



WOMEN IN A FREE COUNTRY 285 

rindependance. On venait saluer Mademoiselle Fill- 
more, qui prenait tres bien sa situation de princesse du 
sang, et ne montrait ni hauteur ni embarras." 

That is an adequate summing up not only for Presi- 
dential ladies but for American women in general. 
They " took very well their sutuation," showing 
" neither arrogance nor embarrassment," whether they 
happened to be temporarily " princesse du sang," or 
defending a frontier cabin, or working in a sanitary 
fair. 

Comradeship and cooperation were what the women 
of this new country wanted above all things and what 
they managed to get in larger measure than women ever 
got before, though by methods older than Egypt. The 
baby of three and a half in a New England parsonage 
knew the way full well. She knew too the stern law 
her mother had made and respected the letter of it, — • 
the law that she could have no dinner until she had 
finished her square of patchwork or knit three times 
around her troublesome* small stocking. " I can re- 
member as if it were yesterday," said this same fem- 
inine creature, whose hair has been white now for two 
score years, — " I can remember how I used to climb 
the stairs and knock on the door of my father's study. 

* Well, what does my little daughter want ? ' he would 
say. * I can't have any dinner to-day.' * Why not ? ' 

* 'Cause I have n't done my patchwork.' " And there 
the mite would stand, her blue eyes facing down his 
purely official frown and her tiny hands clutching the 
tools she despised. " Come here," and he would lift 
her on his knee and take the needle she most willingly 
resigned. " Hold fast now." This referred to the 
shreds of calico. Then he would stick in the needle, 
awkwardly, but carefully to avoid pricking an incau- 
tious, waving finger. " Now pull." The long thread 



286 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

would begin to move slowly, the smile on the face of 
each broadening as it ate its way through the cloth. 
" Now pull again," he would command, when the 
needle was once more in place, and this time both 
would laugh aloud. " And the square would be fin- 
ished long before twelve o'clock!" said this old lady 
who is still young. 

Perhaps this is executive ability. Perhaps it is beat- 
ing the devil around the stump. Perhaps it is woman's 
wile. Perhaps it is self-preservation. Whatever it 
is, the American woman has it in large measure. She 
keeps the law; she does what is required of her, — in 
her own way, — and down in the bottom of her heart 
she knows her power. Kipling was quite right when 
he said that the Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady 
are sisters under their skins. So also are the Indian 
Arachne and Mary the mother of Washington, and 
this minister's mite, and all the other daughters of Eve. 
And there is reason to believe that American men like 
them that way. 



CHAPTER XIV 

RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 

BRILLAT SAVARIN'S summing up of our 
crude young civilization in his famous mot 
" One hundred rehgions and only one sauce ! " 
could scarcely have been improved at the time he made 
it, for seven w^ords better calculated to open up vistas 
of American miracles and misdeeds in politics, philoso- 
phy, and domestic science would be hard to find. We 
had at the moment the most abundant food supply and 
the worst cookery on the planet; yet we complacently 
assumed that human beings who so abused the gifts of 
Providence were wise enough to reason out, each for 
himself, a plan of salvation. 

" And all these sects live peaceably in the vicinity of 
each other ! " wrote Saxe Weimar, after enumerating 
the twenty-odd varieties of Christian he found wor- 
shiping side by side in Philadelphia. No one could 
deny that the miracle existed ; but no one, not Ameri- 
can born, could expect it to endure. " The next Aaron 
Burr who seeks to carve a kingdom for himself out of 
the overgrown territories of the Union may discover 
that fanaticism is the most effective weapon with which 
ambition can arm itself . . . and that camp-meetings 
may be very well directed to forward the designs of a 
military prophet," wrote Robert Southey, England's 
poet laureate, in 1829. " Were another Mahomet to 
arise, there is no other part of the world where he 
would find more scope or fairer opportunity." 

287 



288 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

In view of the many delusions practised in the name 
of rehgion, and the many times the gHtter of gold or 
the sullen gleam of fire-brands has been mistaken for 
the white light of truth, such skepticism was justified. 
Fortunately for us the working out of the problem on 
this continent has been so full of inconsistencies that 
they have neutralized each other. Philadelphia's 
twenty-two sects got along more amicably together than 
ten could have done, or two. 

North America was cosmopolitan long before the 
United States became narrowly national; and in spite 
of the overwhelming influence of New England on our 
national customs, there were many sections where Puri- 
tan notions did not prevail. St. Louis showed French 
influence for decades after the French flag vanished 
from the Mississippi, and New Orleans was a godless 
foreign city where theaters flourished and quadroon 
balls, not to be mentioned in the hearing of sisters 
and sweethearts, exercised their fell charm. The 
Spanish ways of Pensacola greatly disturbed good Mrs. 
Jackson. There were customs in the Carolinas that 
New England disapproved; but, taken all in all. Sab- 
bath observance was strict, a day of long prayers, dis- 
mal cold dinners, and a theology calculated to terrify 
children into convulsions, being deemed most accept- 
able to the Almighty. 

It was inevitable that strong opinions and hard rules 
should prevail in those colonies settled by men who 
crossed the ocean for conscience's sake. But when the 
colonies came to form their union, precisely the same 
causes worked together to wring from them the ap- 
parent inconsistency of making no rules at all. Agree- 
ment being the paramount need, the less said on this 
vital matter of religion the better. 

John Jay even opposed a motion that the first Con- 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 289 

tinental Congress be opened with prayer, on the 
ground that religious sentiments were too varied. But 
his colleagues, accustomed to lay affairs of far less 
consequence before the Lord, were not disposed to em- 
bark on a venture of such gravity without it. Samuel 
Adams answered Jay by remarking with some asperity, 
that he at least was no bigot and would gladly listen 
to a prayer by any pious gentleman who was also a 
friend to his country. Congress approved this, and 
next morning Mr. Duche " with his clerks, in his 
pontificals," appeared at the appointed hour, read the 
Thirty-fifth Psalm and several prayers, and then 
launched unexpectedly into extemporaneous petition. 
If any were scandalized they had been silenced before- 
hand by agreeing with Samuel Adams ; while those 
who looked upon printed prayers as wicked relics of 
Popery were of course pleased. Thus the spectacle of 
the reverend Duche " in his pontificals " talking fa- 
miliarly to the Lord, instead of reading to him out 
of a book, was the most illuminating that could have 
come before Congress ; and Congress wisely decided to 
leave religion out of organic law and trust it entirely 
to custom. 

Custom clamped it in bands more inflexible than 
law. An eminent writer has lately pointed out that 
the Puritan Sunday was no native growth, but an im- 
portation from England where It had its root in pol- 
itics as a protest against driving the poor in work- 
fetters twenty-four hours a day for seven long days in 
the week. So the American Sunday drew its strength 
from the two underlying impulses that brought New 
Englanders across the sea, deep religious feeling and 
equally deep political conviction. 

Persecution for religion came to an end in the col- 
onies before the Reverend Duche offered his prayer. 



290 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

It had ceased to be lawful to hang Quakers in Massa- 
chusetts or to hound men out of a community because 
they called their belief by an unpopular name; but per- 
secution of irreligion went on unrelentingly for many 
years. People might call their faith by almost any 
name they chose, so long as their practice measured up 
to one fixed standard. " Surely the Jews could not ex- 
ceed this country in their external observances," wrote 
one critic of our ways. Harriet Martineau, usually so 
kindly in her judgments, said that the worship of pub- 
lic opinion was the real established religion of Amer- 
ica; and Fanny Kemble, who married here, declared 
that we had spent all the years since gaining national 
independence in trying to divest ourselves individually 
of that same great boon, and were reduced to a pain- 
ful conformity in everything from churchgoing to the 
trimming of petticoats. 

For the better part of a century every visitor to our 
shores commented on the American Sunday. " Noth- 
ing," wrote De Tocqueville, " strikes a foreigner on his 
arrival in America more forcibly than the regard paid 
to the Sabbath. There is one in particular of the large 
American cities in which all social movements begin 
to be suspended even on Saturday evening. You 
traverse its streets at the hour at which you expect 
men in the middle of life to be engaged in business and 
young people in pleasure, and you meet with solitude 
and silence. Not only have all ceased to work, but 
they appear to have ceased to exist. Neither the move- 
ments of industry are heard, nor the accents of joy, nor 
even the confused murmur which arises from the midst 
of a great city. Chains are hung across the streets in 
the neighborhood of the churches; the half-closed shut- 
ters of the houses scarcely admit a ray of light into the 
dwellings of the citizens. Now and then you perceive 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 291 

a solitary individual who glides silently along the de- 
serted streets and lanes." 

As late as 1850 another French writer noted with 
glee the warning which he called " tres caracteristique " 
posted in the Boston Public Gardens to the effect that 
breaking shrubs and flowers would be punished by a 
heavier fine if committed on Sunday. " Elsewhere 
such fines are imposed solely that the offense may not 
be repeated. Here they are considered from the angle 
of moral responsibility. The guilt being greater on 
the Sabbath, it follows naturally that the punishment 
should be more severe." 

That was years after the Puritan Sunday had been 
mitigated. What the rank and file of the people really 
thought of it in its full severity, — in the days when, 
as one New Englander put it, " I would as soon have 
thought of picking a neighbor's pocket on Saturday as 
of smiling on the Sabbath," we can only guess. What- 
ever they thought, they followed their self-made rules 
with painful literalness. Yet expressions of religious 
belief culled from the letters of eminent men show a 
liberality far in advance of custom. 

Washington writing to Lafayette, confessed that he 
was quite willing to allow others to follow " that road 
to Heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, 
easiest, and least liable to exception." " But of 
course," said some one less liberal, " no gentleman 
would care to travel to Heaven by any road except the 
Episcopal Church." 

John Adams, destined by his father to the ministry, 
was repelled by the doctrines taught, but later acquired 
a comfortable belief of his own. In old age he re- 
ferred to a passage in De Senectute where Cicero, look- 
ing happily forward to reunion with friends, and a 
meeting with interesting people about whom he has 



292 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

only heard, combats the idea that death is an evil. 
" That is just as I feel," said Adams. " Nothing 
would tempt me to go back. I agree with my old 
friend Dr. Franklin, who used to say on this subject, 
' We are all invited to a great entertainment. Your 
carriage comes first to the door, but we shall all meet 
there.' " 

While yet a boy, Aaron Burr confronted the exact- 
ing theology of the moment with fatal sincerity and 
made his choice. One cannot stifle the belief that 
much of his after-career is explained by the effect of 
this ill-timed study on a precocious, undisciplined mind. 
To others less acute in reasoning or less perverse in 
disposition, it brought comfort or suffering as the case 
might be. In the humbleness of old age John Ran- 
dolph, another of the erratic children of men, wrote in 
the last volume of his Gibbon a recantation of all the 
bitter notes he had made in the earlier volumes, ex- 
plaining that they were the expressions of " an un- 
happy young man, deluded by the sophisms of infidel- 

Lengthening years were apt to change men's views, 
and life and death brought each the answer to his own 
riddle. Hamilton, we read, received the communion 
upon his deathbed. Madison, not a member of any 
church, passed through the varied phases of a revival 
in his youth, and mild skepticism in early manhood. 
He opposed the union of church and State on political 
grounds, but never did or said anything hostile to the 
church, both out of respect to the institution itself and 
for love of his pious and somewhat domineering 
mother, who lived under his roof to extreme old age. 

Out in the wilderness Daniel Boone summed up his 
creed, toward the evening of his life, in these words 
to a kinsman : " All the religion I have is to fear God, 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 293 

believe in Jesus Christ, do all the good to my neighbors 
and myself that I can, and do as little harm as I can 
help ; and trust on God's mercy for the rest." 

The " infidel " Thomas Jefferson, for whose eternal 
and fiery punishment certain ministers gave thanks 
when they heard that he was dead, answered the Rev- 
erend Isaac Story on the subject of transmigration of 
souls, in the following humble and trustful fashion : 
" When I was young I was fond of the speculations 
which seemed to promise some insight into that hidden 
country ; but observing at length that they left me in the 
same ignorance in which they had found me, I have for 
very many years ceased to read or think concerning 
them, and have reposed my head on that pillow of 
ignorance which a benevolent Creator has made so soft 
for us, knowing how much we should be forced to use 
it. I have thought it better, by nourishing the good 
passions and controlling the bad, to merit an inheritance 
in a state of being of which I can know so little, and 
trust for the future to Him who has been so good in the 
past." At Monticello he invited men of the most 
varied religious beliefs to visit him, and was rigid in 
exacting courteous treatment of all, — which was good 
manners, whatever it argued for his theology. 

Andrew Jackson, who was a daily reader of the 
Bible, and never lacked courage, shocked his auditors 
one evening by boldly defending certain conceptions 
of Swedenborg as being as " sooblime " as any to be 
found in the books of the Prophets. When he was an 
old man he joined the church in fulfilment of a prom- 
ise made to his wife, long dead. Some of his political 
enemies chose to regard this act as a personal affront. 
" And now," one of them bitterly remarked, " w^hen he 
is approaching his last hours, when good men are pray- 
ing that he may be punished for his many misdeeds, 



294 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

he turns Presbyterian and cheats the Devil him- 
self." 

It seems a far cry from free trade to Sabbath break- 
ing, yet it was the War of 1812 that battered the first 
dent in the circle of Thou Shalt Nots with which Sun- 
day was surrounded. Hostilities put an end to even 
the little coastwise traffic that had survived the Em- 
bargo and futile attempts at retaliation ; but merchan- 
dise had to be moved, and the only way was by wagon, 
over miserable roads. This was costly as well as slow, 
and merchants who paid freight did not care to add to 
the delay or the expense by keeping horses and men 
in idleness one day in seven. Heavily laden wagons 
began to rumble through scandalized towns on Sunday, 
furtively at first and at odd hours ; then boldly during 
hours of service, within sight and hearing of the meet- 
ing house. Tithing men lay in wait at toll gates and 
cross-roads to intercept them, and this gave rise to a 
merry mimic war. Meantime deacons who were mer- 
chants, and other "professors" of religion whose in- 
terests were divided between the world of trade and 
the world of the spirit, ripped holes in their souls' sal- 
vation on Sunday and repaired the damage as best they 
might during the week by the difficult process of thread- 
ing the Needle's Eye. 

An ungodly order was issued by the Postmaster- 
General at Washington directing that post offices be 
kept open for one hour after letters were assorted, 
when the mails arrived on Sunday. Another innova- 
tion of about the same date was the institution of Sun- 
day schools for children with services adapted to their 
needs and mental development. Times were changing 
indeed. Liberality was in the air. The day was not 
past when a schoolmaster could dismiss his pupils 
after a four-hour week day session with the announce- 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 295 

ment : " There will now be a prayer-meeting. Those 
who wish to lie down in everlasting burning may go; 
the rest will stay." But the hour had already struck 
when the earnest man, overcome with the brutality of 
his own words, had the grace to seek out the boys who 
were plucky enough to leave, and beg their pardon with 
tears in his eyes. 

Not one of the innovations was visited with blasting 
retribution. Conservatives shook their heads, but 
more and more individuals gained courage to act ac- 
cording to their own way of thinking. In the very 
stronghold of Puritanism the liberal movement took 
form that split the churches of New England during 
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. While it 
did not go to such lengths in other parts of the coun- 
try it showed itself everywhere in lessened church at- 
tendance. Public opinion still had immense weight, — 
enough to condemn men to go more or less willingly to 
their death in the duello, — but it could no longer drive 
them en masse to the sanctuary. The women, dear 
souls, being more conservative, went and prayed the 
harder. 

" What the gentlemen of Philadelphia do with them- 
selves on a Sunday I will not pretend to guess ; but the 
prodigious number of females in the churches is very 
remarkable," wrote Mrs. Trollope at the time that 
chains were thrown across the streets to impede traffic. 
New York's first amusement park, the Elysian Fields 
at Hoboken, cast its spell of green grass and fresh air 
about the minds and vagrant steps of city men ; and the 
era of clubs for every conceivable object was dawning. 
A marked change was also taking place in political 
methods. The sway of party increased as the influ- 
ence of church discipline diminished ; and it would be 
a curious study to determine what relation one bore to 



296 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the other. It is certain that when church-going was 
more nearly universal there were fewer secular organi- 
zations to compete with it. 

It remained for Lafayette to shatter the rule that 
guarded the Sabbath from invasion by purely social 
functions. On his second visit to America enthusiasm 
so far got the better of custom that the last evening re- 
ception given him in Boston took place on Sunday, — 
in the community where even driving out to dine was 
stamped as reprehensible, if not actually illegal. That 
custom also Lafayette defied by going to break bread 
with his venerable friend ex-President John Adams. 
But out of respect for the day the four white horses 
that usually drew his carriage were summarily cut 
down to two ; and it is significant that no sound of wel- 
come rose from the crowds that gathered to see him 
pass. The breach could scarcely be pardoned even in 
" the voletile fancy of a Frenchman." " On a week 
day," an eyewitness tells us, " no police would have 
been strong enough to repress the shouts." 

It is hard to realize what a very large place the 
church then held in the social life of the people. Out- 
side the home, politics, business, and the church were 
the great divisions of human activity. The home and 
business were aff^airs of the individual, great combina- 
tions in trade not having come into their own. Poli- 
tics and the church, therefore, were the two forms of 
organized endeavor. Politics, engrossing as it was, 
had its periods of intensity followed by long intervals 
of comparative torpor. In the vocabulary of to-day 
it was a seasonal industry. The activity of the church, 
on the other hand, was continuous, with meetings 
every week, and all business giving way to it com- 
pletely one day in seven. It claimed authority to oc- 
cupy itself not only with the soul of the individual, but 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 297 

with the present deportment and eternal welfare of his 
neighbors, — which opened vast possibilities of scandal 
and helpfulness. It ran the whole gamut of emotions 
from heights of spiritual ecstasy to black despair. 
Last but by no means least, it was the one public or- 
ganization in which women had a recognized place. 
It offered them, indeed, all they could get outside of the 
home in the way of aspiration or diversion or grati- 
fication of charitable impulse, since education was but 
grudgingly meted out to them, and amusements, or a 
business life, or philanthropy in the modern sense, were 
not to be had. 

In the cities, interests centered in the substantial 
churches with their well-established round of social 
and parish duties, occasionally broken in upon by vis- 
its of revivalists exhorting to a more godly way of 
living. These were men of great power and usually 
from a distance, for the prophet in his own country 
rarely works miracles of conversion. Even Franklin, 
whose " strong prosaic commonsense and feeble spir- 
ituality " were certainly not of a type to be easily 
swayed, found copper and silver and " five pistoles of 
gold " charmed from his pockets by the Irishman 
Whitefield, who came to tell the Philadelphians that 
they were half beasts and half devils, and as a logical 
sequence to beg money of them to build an orphan 
home in Georgia. Franklin's reason told him that 
since the orphans and the money were in Philadelphia 
it was unnecessary to transport both to Georgia at 
great expense before putting them together; and if 
Franklin was moved to give coin for a plan his judg- 
ment condemned, we can well believe that others were 
influenced as strongly. 

In long-settled country districts the meeting-house 
became the focal point toward which the people made 



298 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

decorous pilgrimage once a week, with elders and chil- 
dren piled into carriages and wagons, or coming afoot 
or on horseback according to their prosperity and the 
state of the roads. Between services, and before and 
after them, they lingered in the church-yard, exchang- 
ing salutations or glances that carried more weight 
than words. It was a gathering of subdued demeanor 
as befitted the day, but it served as a clearing house 
for the business and the courting and the excitement of 
the whole community. It was an excellent place to 
keep an eye and a rein on the actions of youth ; and 
the young were very much as they are to-day, — not 
nearly so wise or sedate as their elders thought they 
should be. Fourteen hours were still considered a 
reasonable day's work ; yet youth had energy for 
merrymaking afterward and drove off at every oppor- 
tunity over the snow or through moonlit, summer 
nights for supper and frolic. Dancing would get into 
their feet and would be indulged in with increasing 
gusto until the scorching breath of religious criticism 
put an end to it. Then after a season of repentance, 
tearful on the part of the girls and sullen on the part 
of the boys, a singing school in the church would merge 
into something a little gayer and the cycle begin anew. 
In the more recently settled country, " stationary " 
preachers labored among their scattered flocks on a 
pittance incredibly small, made up mostly " in kind " 
from voluntary contributions. And out on the very 
edge of civilization sturdy " circuit riders " carried 
their message from clearing to clearing. In the arid 
intellectual life of the frontier the itinerant preachers 
were a godsend, though few had the education and 
mental caliber of Samuel Doak, the Princeton graduate, 
who was moved by the Spirit in the early days of the 
Holston Settlements to wander along blazed trails, 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 299 

driving before him a sorry old gray horse loaded with 
books that he distributed as he passed, dropping with 
them a word in season, and thus linking the forest 
dwellers once again with a far-off intellectual life that 
might have been on another planet. 

Most of the frontier preachers were men of staunch 
piety whose small amount of learning was yet greater 
than that of the people to whom they ministered. The 
crowning event of their year was the camp-meeting. 
To attend it plans were laid long in advance, and to 
reach it long journeys had to be taken, not always with- 
out danger. The meeting was usually held in the 
woods, where tents and wagons surrounded a central 
gathering place dominated by a raised platform, from 
which hymns were given out and the half dozen preach- 
ers in attendance, one after another addressed an ever- 
changing audience that filled the rough benches facing 
this rostrum. 

Beyond the benches tents gleamed between tree 
trunks, horses stamped, or fed patiently beside the 
wagons in which they had dragged their owners over 
miles of stump-infested road. Children were every- 
where under foot; dogs played their friendly part be- 
tween beasts and humans, poking sympathetic noses 
into the concerns of each ; and lovers stole away from 
the preaching about hell-fire to wander through still 
places of the forest in a paradise of their own. Busy 
Marthas watching well-filled pots that sent incense 
heavenward, strained their ears toward the fervor of 
exhortation and the sharp responsive ejaculations 
"Glory!" "Amen!" "Lord have mercy!" that 
came to them muted by distance and rustling leaves. 

The heat of midsummer enveloped the camp ; and 
when checkered patches of afternoon sunlight gave 
way to deepening shadows, great torches of " fat " 



300 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

pine flared out from iron baskets high above the 
ground to light the speakers' platform. The faces of 
the audience took on added intentness in this fitful 
illumination as gusts of wind caused the flames to veer 
and send pungent smoke curling among the trees. 
Lightning and the low growl of thunder added their 
menace and unrest. Hymns wailed, the exhortation 
became more imperative and the pleading more intense 
as the ministers called upon sinners to repent before it 
was eternally too late. 

One after another men and women rose from their 
seats and moved forward as though under a spell, to 
fall upon their knees before the low railing that sep- 
arated the preachers from their audience. Here they 
agonized with groans and contortions, or in the utmost 
silence, while the singing went on. Ministers came 
down to the railing to pray with them individually, 
and sympathetic friends lent them the aid of hand- 
clasp and sustaining arm. A child's cry, the hoot of 
an owl, or the muttered oath of some rufiian on the 
outskirts of the crowd broke oddly upon the scene, 
which gained in emotional intensity as the hour ad- 
vanced until, like the torches, it burned out of its own 
heat. Then the crowd dissolved, preachers and peni- 
tents and congregation seeking their tents or riding 
away into the night ; and only a dull glow of live coals 
and small forest sounds broke the peace of the woods 
until sunrise woke the camp again to the commonplace 
of breakfast and the spiritual crescendo of another 
day. 

With all their features that seem to us objectionable 
and puerile, these meetings filled a large need ; and in 
spite of their excesses did something to raise the moral 
standard. After a season of camp-meeting men 
neither drank nor swore so hard; for a time at least. 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 301 

To get away from the cabin's sordid, interminable 
duties ; to meet with friends in the crowd ; to turn their 
thoughts however crudely to things of the spirit, 
counted for much in the lives of these pioneers. In 
their homes they had almost no books, no amusements 
at all, and no means of self-expression save the toil- 
some one of converting the wilderness into a dwelling 
place for men. Sometimes months passed without 
their seeing a face beyond the members of their house- 
holds. Gatherings such as these provided at once their 
society, their drama, and their souls' inspiration. 

On the frontier and in the cities alike the profession 
of preacher was held in high esteem. The temptation 
is strong to say that as a class they were held in too 
much reverence. Mere men could not live up to all 
that was expected of them, and when the spell was 
broken it was the worse for them and for the souls to 
whom they ministered. Some of the ablest among 
them felt and vainly strove to overcome the barrier be- 
tween themselves and their congregations. Channing 
deplored the distance his parishoners insisted on plac- 
ing between them. " My profession requires me to 
deal with such men as actually exist," he lamented, 
" yet I can never see them except in disguise. I am 
shut out from knowledge which is essential to my 
work." He was never able to reach across this arti- 
ficial wall. The young especially could not believe his 
utter simplicity and forgetfulness of self. But the 
picture Fanny Kemble draws of this frail old gentle- 
man with the wonderful voice, intent upon showing 
her his garden, seizing the first wraps that came to 
hand and pacing the grass with her for an hour within 
arm's reach of passers by, so absorbed in talk of things 
spiritual that he was oblivious to the fact that the shawl 
about his shoulders belonged to his wife and that it 



302 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

was Mrs. Channing's poke bonnet that covered his gray 
locks, makes one certain that he should have been loved 
by everything with a heart in its breast. 

The range was great from this man in his atmos- 
phere of intellectual power and scholarly eloquence to 
Father Taylor, friend of sea- faring men, who chose 
to hoist a flag in front of his chapel instead of ringing 
a bell, and having been a sailor himself knew how to 
talk his way into the hearts of the most ungodly, and 
to find his illuminating path through the blackest of 
their boarding houses. 

Even greater was the distance between the men of 
education and broad views and old Peter Cartwright of 
the frontier, about whom even during his lifetime so 
many legends grew that in the region where he lived 
he has become a sort of Protestant Friar Tuck. Yet 
all three were great preachers and the country needed 
them all and many like them. 

It is doubtful whether Channing or his audience 
could have appreciated to the full the fluent, prejudiced, 
old frontiersman with his primitive and satisfying 
scale of rewards and punishments ; and it is certain that 
Cartwright would have had small use for the liberality 
of the Bostonian. He had only scorn for " the ret- 
icences of modern theology." " Brother Blank, three 
prayers like that would freeze Hell over ! " he re- 
marked to a young minister of his own denomination, 
who had, as he noted with sorrow, absorbed the new 
poison. The brave, devout old man died at a green 
old age after baptizing 12,000 persons and preaching 
15,000 sermons; and that he loved the frontier and 
waxed sarcastic over the East was no barrier to the 
sympathy between him and his people. One of the 
stories told about him, that he liked too well to con- 
tradict, was how he became confused in the mazes of 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 303 

a New York hotel and settled the matter by getting a 
hatchet and blazing the way, pioneer fashion, along the 
mahogany corridors from his room to the office. 

After public opinion had sanctioned some liberty in 
the matter of church-going, it came to be a question 
of whether it " paid." Even in earlier days that point 
was raised. A regimental chaplain who was a friend 
of Franklin's complained that his men would not attend 
service. Franklin had a disconcerting practicality. 
He answered that he supposed it was beneath the dig- 
nity of a minister to dispense the daily ration of rum, 
but that if he could bring himself to do that, and give 
it out immediately after the benediction, his difficulty 
would be solved. That has been the test from the be- 
ginning. The men who had reviving spirits to offer, 
of whatever kind, were sure of a hearing. 

As the sway of the church-going habit lessened, so- 
cieties and associations for many purposes increased 
to usurp its place. Among them were endless new 
schemes for betterment and regeneration, half religious 
and half social. Even to name the phalansteries and 
monasteries and Shaker communities; the Brook 
Farms, the New Harmonies, the Free Inquirers, the 
Rappists, and all the other abnormal forms of living, 
accompanied by undue partiality to dirt, or undue in- 
sistance on cleanliness, or a ban on buttons, or some 
equally tangible and negligible evidence of being differ- 
ent to their neighbors, would be profitless, even were it 
possible. They appeared sporadically in various parts 
of the country and ran their course, short or long. 

Some of them reached out into politics. For though 
church and State were sundered at the beginning, re- 
ligion and politics have touched hands or parted com- 
pany continually during our history, — as was in- 
evitable with people brought together as ours were. 



304 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

All the early state constitutions had religious or anti- 
religious provisions. Some began by forbidding min- 
isters of the Gospel to sit in their legislatures. Others 
went to the opposite extreme of excluding all men not 
willing to swear to believing in God, heaven, and hell. 
Some denied the franchise to various sects like Catho- 
lics or Jews, discriminating against them as though 
they were criminals. Others discouraged nonsec- 
tarianism by obliging every taxpayer to contribute to 
the support of some church. Religion slipped into the 
debates of Congress many times in varying ways. The 
discussion over buying Jefferson's books to replace the 
Congressional Library destroyed by the British, was 
strongly tinged with it. The question of a Sunday 
inauguration had to be faced and settled. Protests 
and petitions against moving the mails on the day of 
rest poured in at the time the order was issued requir- 
ing post offices to remain open for one hour on Sunday. 
The Government answered that the mails had always 
gone forward on that day, that its own despatches 
must travel as fast as possible, and that granting the 
petition would mean a delay of five days between Bos- 
ton and New Orleans. But the protests were kept up 
for twenty years by what was known as the Christian 
party ; and they increased and multiplied until state 
legislatures took a hand, begging on their side that 
Sunday mails should not be stopped. 

While religion thus made conscious and more or less 
unsuccessful efforts to invade politics, politics uncon- 
sciously and inevitably invaded religion. Anti-Ma- 
sonic and anti-Catholic feeling have swept the country 
at recurring intervals like waves of the sea; and when 
the overpowering, unavoidable question of slavery was 
before the people it split asunder the great Baptist and 
Methodist and Presbyterian denominations. 



■RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 305 

Anti-Catholic feeling was a hatred brought across 
the ocean. According to tradition, Free Masonry had 
its birth back of the Pyramids. Most of the other 
religions or religious hatreds that have left an impress 
on our country trace their beginnings far in the past. 
Only one is thoroughly modern or thoroughly Ameri- 
can, — Mormonism. And, as it happens, that is the 
only one of them all which came near to justifying 
Southey's prediction. The story of its genesis and 
growth is one of the incredible romances of the West- 
ern world. 

Its founder was a man of the common name of 
Smith, born in 1805 in the rocky State of Vermont, 
who grew up to farm labor in northern New York. A 
scanty knowledge of the three R's and a strong religious 
bent were his principal intellectual assets. Occupied 
with his soul's salvation, he saw visions and dreamed 
dreams but lapsed at times into ways of vanity. Be- 
fore he was twenty the visions led him to discover 
buried treasure in the shape of a stone box containing 
metal plates upon which was written a new holy book. 
At first he was warned not to make its contents known ; 
but some years later this injunction was removed and 
he began translating the engraved characters that cov- 
ered both sides of the " gold " plates, bound together 
into the likeness of a book. This he did by means of a 
pair of giant spectacles providentially buried in the 
same box. Being unable to write with ease he per- 
suaded a well-to-do farmer of his acquaintance, named 
Harris, to act as scribe, the two pursuing their labors 
in the secret of an attic chamber; Joseph Smith with 
his plates and spectacles being hidden from his com- 
panion behind a curtain. All went well until Mrs. 
Harris, in cleaning or otherwise invading the attic, 
came across the manuscript and promptly destroyed it. 



3o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

In spite of this domestic contretemps, Harris con- 
tinued to back the venture, mortgaging his farm to de- 
fray the cost of printing when the translation was 
finally done, this time with Smith's own wife acting 
as amanuensis. The book contained nearly as many 
words as the Old Testament and saw the light of print 
at Palmyra, New York, in 1830. It attracted little no- 
tice, even locally; but its few believers established a 
church according to the rules laid down, and in an 
incredibly short period its enthusiastic converts num- 
bered over a hundred ; a Campbellite preacher of per- 
suasive tongue named Sidney Rigdon, who presided 
over two congregations in northern Ohio, coming into 
the fold and bringing many of his parishioners with 
him. 

The very audacity of the new religion appealed to 
the imagination. Being a present revelation, the Book 
of Mormon proved that the Lord was neither dead nor 
sleeping, but vigilant as of old to protect his chosen 
people. It directed them to establish a kingdom of 
righteousness on earth ; gave them a title satisfying 
to sound and vanity, — The Church of Jesus Christ of 
Latter Day Saints, — demanded tangible evidences of 
faith in perfect obedience and the paying of a literal 
tithe into the coffers of the church ; and in return prom- 
ised guidance by means of direct revelations from on 
high. 

The charge that the Golden Bible was written In a 
jumble of characters copied haphazard from Greek and 
Roman alphabets, sprawling in unseemly attitudes and 
interspersed with crosses and strange marks that bore 
a faint resemblance to signs on the Mexican calendar, 
could not be proved, since nobody had seen the golden 
plates, and few had examined the fragment of trac- 
ing that Harris submitted to a learned gentleman. 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 307 

The report current among the elect that the book was 
written in " reformed Egyptian " hieroglyphics was 
perfectly satisfactory to them, and the fact that it was 
expressed in stilted and occasionally ungrammatical 
phrases troubled them not at all. 

It purported to contain the history of the early in- 
habitants of America, descended from a lost tribe of 
Israel. How an uneducated man like Joseph Smith 
could conceive and execute such a work, formidable in 
bulk if in nothing else, and for how much of it he was 
actually responsible, no one knows. Opponents of the 
new sect affirmed that an unpublished historical novel 
inspired by the same idea of Indian origin had been 
written by a retired clergyman of scholarly tastes for 
his own amusement about the year 1812. The 
Prophet Mormon and his son Moroni, both of whom 
figure largely in the Golden Bible, were prominent 
characters in this novel. The author lent the manu- 
script to a publisher friend, but refused to have it 
printed. Rigdon, the Campbellite preacher, was a type- 
setter in the employ of this publisher, and the infer- 
ence is that he copied the manuscript and in time pre- 
vailed on Joseph Smith to lend himself to the deception ; 
and that they together added a certain amount of re- 
ligious matter to Solomon Spaulding's old novel and 
foisted it upon a gullible public. 

If a tale more far fetched than the original could be 
invented it is this one of explanation; and the Book of 
Mormon remains a mystery, fascinating and inex- 
plicable. 

In two years Mormon churches were to be found in 
almost every Northern and Western State, and mis- 
sionaries were sent out, first to the Indians, then to 
Europe. Soon converts began coming from England. 
The Federal Government turned back Mormon agents 



3o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

from Indian Territory on the ground that it was not 
lawful for white men to take up their residence there. 
Then their town of Zion was founded near Indepen- 
dence on the western edge of Missouri, Smith having 
learned by revelation that that was to be " the land of 
promise and place of the city." Tv/elve hundred peo- 
ple came to it in the course of a few mouths. The 
older inhabitants tried to sell out and leave them in un- 
disputed possession, but converts were too poor to buy, 
though they continued to flock toward Zion. There- 
upon their neighbors began a series of petty persecu- 
tions, burning haystacks and breaking windows in the 
hope of driving them away. Failing in this they 
charged them with blaspheming and stealing, and the 
more heinous crime for that day and place, of anti- 
slavery doctrines. When the Mormons refused to 
move they demolished their newspaper office and 
treated two of their elders to tar and feathers. An 
appeal to the governor was met with the advice that the 
matter be brought before the courts. Meantime flog- 
ging and incendiarism carried such terror among them 
that they crossed the Missouri River to take refuge in 
more northern counties. 

Smith, who had remained with the parent colony in 
Ohio, started to their assistance with a band of men 
armed with butcher knives, old swords, and guns and 
pistols of many styles. The governor of Missouri 
met him and warned him to disband his army, which 
he did; but as individuals its numbers stayed on to 
hearten the brethren. In this manner the Mormons 
lived for the space of about six years in northern Mis- 
souri, founding new settlements and increasing in num- 
bers until driven away by indignant citizens. As was 
natural under these circumstances, they perfected a 
military organization inside the church which they 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 309 

obeyed blindly in preference to Federal or State au- 
thority. This constitutes the most serious charge 
against them as a body. Individually there were sin- 
ners and martyrs among them as among their Gentile 
neighbors. 

An attempt on the part of the Gentiles to keep the 
Mormons from voting was resented, and resulted in a 
state of war that ended only when the Mormons were 
driven from Missouri in the winter of 1839. They 
took refuge in Illinois, where by the law of manhood 
suffrage every white man over twenty-one turned au- 
tomatically into a voter after a residence of six months. 
The Presidential contest of 1840 was close at hand and 
Democrats and Whigs alike saw something providen- 
tial in this influx of a thousand potential voters. They 
vied in expressions of sympathy, and the Mormons, 
pleased with their reception, refused offers of land in 
Iowa and got possession of an unsuccessful town on 
the Illinois side of the Missouri River, half way be- 
tween Burlington and Quincy. Here they staked out 
their city of Nauvoo and laid the foundations of a 
great temple on a bluff overlooking a wonderful sweep 
of water, in a situation not unlike that of Leghorn. 

Inspired by natural acumen and divine guidance, 
Smith guessed correctly as to the outcome of the elec- 
tion and caused his followers to vote the Whig ticket. 
In return the legislature gave him just the kind of 
charter he wished for Nauvoo, with leave to establish a 
municipal court that could dispute the mandates of the 
state courts. The legislature also chartered the 
Legion, which was the Mormon army, independent of 
state control, though bound to defend the State if called 
upon by the governor for that purpose. 

Nauvoo grew even faster than Zion had done. Its 
population numbered 3000 one year, 7000 the next. 



3IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

By 1845 ^t had reached 15,000, St. Louis being the 
only town in the whole Northwest that was larger. 
Fifteen thousand more men and women of Mormon 
faith were also scattered in surrounding towns. But 
their evil star was still in the ascendant. In 1842 the 
governor of Missouri was seriously wounded while 
sitting in his home. The Mormons, who were known 
to bear him no love, were accused, and a requisition 
was made for Smith's arrest on the ground that he 
had inspired the deed. His own court instantly re- 
leased him on a writ of habeas corpus. Complications 
growing out of this clash between state and Mormon 
authority raised high feeling which was not lessened 
by a vicious attack upon Mormonism in general, and 
Smith in particular, made by a former friend of his 
who had been the first mayor of Nauvoo. Moreover 
Smith began to preach and to practise polygamy, which 
caused a quarrel within the church itself. 

Trouble brooded and grew. In 1844 the whole 
countryside was aflame. Smith was arrested again on 
the old charge of inciting to murder. His friends 
rallied to prevent his extradition. The state militia 
was called out. Summoned to surrender he fled, but 
was prevailed upon to return and stand trial. He and 
his brother were lodged in jail at Carthage near Nau- 
voo, and there a mob with blackened faces entered and 
killed them both, adding in the eyes of the faithful, 
the supreme glory of martyrdom to all their other vir- 
tues. 

Enmity between Mormons and Gentiles grew more 
bitter daily. The legislature repealed Nauvoo's char- 
ter and once again they had to abandon their home. 
This time they promised to remove beyond the Rocky 
Mountains. Brigham Young, now the Mormon 
leader, sent out parties in the spring of 1846 to build 



RELIGION IN A REPUBLIC 311 

and plant for those who were to follow. Their ene- 
mies affected to believe this a ruse, and in September of 
that year practically drove the last of them out of 
Nauvoo. They camped for that winter at Council 
Bluffs, and early the following spring pioneers again 
set forth into the unknown with a precious train of 
wagons filled with grain and farming tools. It trav- 
eled, when possible, two wagons abreast, and was 
guarded by men with loaded guns. Great herds of 
buffalo impeded progress and Indians made the matter 
of convoy no mere ceremony. 

They made their way through the region of semi- 
desert and wind-carved buttes up the north fork of the 
Platte, over the South Pass and on across the country 
of the Green River, until suddenly the land seemed to 
drop before their very feet, disclosing a broad plain 
where lines of cottonwood trees traced rivers as on a 
map and in the distance gleamed the unmistakable blue 
of a great lake. Three days later the party camped 
upon this plain, and after short but very earnest cere- 
monies of prayer and dedication began to till and plant 
before the sun was high. The energy that had twice 
before wrought miracles was in this new home to bring 
to pass even more marvelous results. The Mormons 
led water from the mountains and made the arid lands 
break into blossoming fields ; and by mere force of 
purpose and willing hands raised in the wilderness a 
city with noble temples. 

Joseph Smith had grown with responsibility from 
a mere farm hand to an efficient and resourceful leader 
of men. Brigham Young developed into the greatest 
business man of his time upon our continent; and 
through his Midas fingers all the interest of the church 
and of his followers had to pass. Unfortunately the 
Mormon record in Utah is marred, as it had been in 



312 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the East, by questionable practises and opposition to 
Federal authority. Mormon wives living together in 
peace if not in amity, was a triumph of grace too often 
to be found ; and the policing of the strange community 
was in the hands of the band of Danites, who wrought 
swift and secret vengeance alike on Gentiles and apos- 
tates. 

With all this these people were God-fearing and 
industrious and by far the most important and efficient 
element in their section. Holding themselves as a peo- 
ple apart, they were yet in our political sense " the 
people " and when the territory of Utah was organized 
in 1850, their city, Salt Lake, became almost of neces- 
sity its capital, and their ruler Brigham Young, the 
territorial governor. 

The deserted Nauvoo meanwhile had been filled by 
another sect, French this time, calling themselves 
Icarians. But prosperity had departed with its build- 
ers ; and to this day it remains perched upon its bluff 
an empty shell, eloquent of glories that are no more. 



CHAPTER XV 

SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 

IN 1850 Ampere, the French traveler who thought 
that President FiHrnore's daughter, " took very 
well her situation," wrote in his notes on the 
West : " there is also an Astronomical Society in Cin- 
cinnati. Its composition is somewhat peculiar. It 
counts among its members 25 physicians, 33 lawyers, 
39 wholesale grocers, 15 retail grocers, 5 ministers, 16 
pork merchants, and 23 carpenters and joiners." 

If the shoemaker had stuck to his last this United 
States of ours could never have been created, or it 
would to-day bear a very different aspect. In the 
young nation everybody meddled with everybody's 
business, to the manifest advantage and discomfort of 
all concerned, and it would seem that about five out of 
every ten noteworthy Americans achieved their great- 
est success in some other than their deliberately chosen 
field of work. The restless energy satirized in the 
French description of an American, hurrying from en- 
deavor to endeavor, planting his garden but never 
gathering its fruits, building his house but never liv- 
ing in it, traveling madly on in search of work or rest 
or pleasure, always going forward but never arriv- 
ing, struck down at last by death before he has come 
to the end of his journey or his hopefulness, — this is 
democracy with elbow-room and riches and freedom 
to develop as it will. At the other extreme lies a caste 

.31.3 



314 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

system like that of India ; so fossilized that a man's one 
escape from the surroundings of his birth is through 
reincarnation. 

Whether or not the sight of greengrocers and pork- 
packers and carpenters pausing in their prosaic labors 
to look up and speculate about the stars moves the gods 
to laughter, certain it is that nowhere else in the world 
could such a company have come together for such a 
purpose. And having come together (only a short 
half century after their town was virgin wilderness) 
nowhere else would they have thought of calling the 
ex-ruler of their nation to deliver the address on the 
opening of their new astronomical observatory. 

It was John Ouincy Adams who went on this errand 
to Cincinnati in 1843. He was no more an astronomer 
than they were, but he was an American and a man of 
such unusually wide reading that, as the story goes, a 
minister who succeeded in naming to him a work with 
which he was not familiar was known for the rest of 
his life as the man who had read one more book than 
President Adams. Moreover, he had been President 
of the United States. Whether his learning or his 
official dignity had the greater weight in inspiring the 
invitation, perhaps not one of them could have told. 
They combined their politics and their local pride and 
their interest in the stars in a truly American mixture 
and made his coming a day of rejoicing. 

In politics the very kernel of the American idea is 
that everybody shall take a hand in the game. That 
has come to be the American idea in education also; 
but it must not be forgotten that both were of slow 
growth. When the Union was formed only the well- 
to-do had a right to vote, and free instruction as a 
nation-wide system was barely established at the time 
of the Civil War. The notion of political equality had 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 315 

been preached but not practised during the first phase 
of our national life ; during the second it got out of ink 
and oratory into the blood of the people and clamored 
for wider suffrage and more and better schools. And 
through better schools it expressed itself in ways 
strange to the old Puritans that yet proclaimed it an 
outgrowth of the old Puritan spirit. 

Schools and votes had both been closely associated 
with religion in the old days. Godliness had much 
to do in determining a man's right to voice in matters 
of government, and the prime argument for establish- 
ing schools had been to outwit the Devil, " It being one 
chief piect of ye ould deluder Satan to keepe men 
from the knowledge of ye Scriptures." Afterwards 
schools came to be favored for their political value, 
" that intelligence might rule the empire ; " but that edu- 
cation is a right which the State owes to every citizen, 
is a very modern notion. 

The first settlers carried an earnest respect for learn- 
ing into the woods of the New World. Those who 
could afford to do so sent their sons back for educa- 
tional advantages. Those who could not, transplanted 
education to the new soil as early and as well as their 
means permitted. Among the first six hundred Eng- 
lishmen to settle in Massachusetts was a goodly num- 
ber of Cambridge graduates, and very early in the his- 
tory of the Colony they founded a new Cambridge, 
" that learning may not be buried in ye graves of our 
fathers." Primary and grammar schools followed. 
Taxes were levied to maintain them, and within a few 
years of the landing of the Pilgrims, the foundation 
of the free school system had been laid. But the foun- 
dation of the college was laid first. It has become the 
fashion to ascribe to these Massachusetts worthies all 
our country's civic and moral virtue, but they were not 



3i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the first to imagine free schools on American soil. 
The earliest indigenous school tax on record was that 
raised to pay Adam Roelandsen who arrived in 1633 
to teach the children of Manhattan. There is a tradi- 
tion too, that a free school was attempted in Virginia 
about twelve months after the Pilgrim fathers landed 
in Massachusetts. If so it failed, for fifty years later 
Governor Berkeley piously thanked the Lord that there 
were " no free schools nor printing " in his colony and 
hoped there might be none for a century to come. 

Education took kindly to the new soil. By 1800 
there was a college of some sort in every State but one. 
College, however, was an elastic term. Harvard and a 
few others already had established reputations. So 
well established that we are gravely assured, though 
inclined to doubt, that during the colonial period 
" many families in Great Britain sent their children out 
to these colleges for the excellent education they af- 
forded." Other institutions of equally pretentious 
names could pretend to no reputations at all. 

North and South, East and West, such schools mul- 
tiplied, some to enlarging usefulness, some to wither 
like seeds sown on stony ground. Most of them were 
under denominational control, and were built or main- 
tained by means curiously at variance with present no- 
tions of what is right and fitting. Lotteries for ex- 
ample were a favorite mode of raising funds for such 
ends. Some of the best were housed in the roughest 
of log cabins; some in beautiful buildings; but even 
in the richest the equipment of classroom and dormitory 
was simple, because there was no other to be had. 
It is hard to remember that the well-to-do artizan to- 
day has household conveniences of which a sybarite 
did not then dream. " We were not brought up in 
luxury," an aged gentleman assured the writer, speak- 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 317 

ing of his days at Yale. " The pump on the Green was 
the source of our entire water supply. In our rooms 
we had stone china pitchers holding perhaps two gal- 
lons. We had to fill these at the pump and carry them 
upstairs. We made our own fires, — and broke the 
tutor's windows." " That last was luxury, Mr. O." 
" Yes," he admitted with a chuckle, " that was." 
Primary education was taken up by each State and 
treated as seemed to it best. Some provided tuition, 
such as it was, free for all. In others only the poor 
were so favored, — a doubtful boon, since a man had 
to pocket his pride and declare himself a pauper to re- 
ceive it. Usually his children went untaught. In the 
East the district school teacher was paid by taxes ; in 
the South by tuition fees. In a general way the his- 
tory of the schools parallels the history of the spread 
of the franchise and of the country's industrial develop- 
ment. Local conditions forced or retarded results, but 
as a rule the Western States, profiting by the experi- 
ence of their elders, began near the point where the 
East left off; and less hampered by precedents and less 
fearful of experiment, were inclined to take short cuts 
toward the end in view. 

To hazard another generalization, doubly dangerous 
where it extends over half a century and the width of 
a continent, it would seem that the South cared less for 
free schools and what they stood for, than the North, 
or those portions of the West settled by people of 
Northern origin. Taking for example two towns 
whose population in 1850 was about the same, ap- 
proximately 19,000, the one in Mississippi had a school 
enrolment only one third the size of the town in Illi- 
nois. The latter's public library was ten times larger, 
and while the churches of the Southern town could seat 
7700, those of the other had been hopefully built to 



3i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

accommodate several thousand in excess of the total 
population. Here it is plain that local conditions were 
responsible, since a community in which slavery exag- 
gerated class distinctions could not in the nature of 
things take much interest in widely diffused public 
instruction. In this same year, 1850, the State of 
Ohio alone had within its borders almost the same num- 
ber of schools as were to be found in the whole eleven 
slave States. 

The Government early defined its policy toward edu- 
cation within Federal territory. The Ordinance of 
1785 relating to lands in the Northwest Territory set 
apart "lot No. 16 of every township for the main- 
tenance of public schools within said township." Two 
years later the famous Ordinance of 1787 asserted 
that " schools and means of education shall forever be 
encouraged " and stipulated that in land purchased by 
the Ohio Company, not only lot No. 16 should be re- 
served for schools, but that " two complete townships 
shall be given perpetually for the purposes of a uni- 
versity, to be laid off ... as near the center as may 
be, so that the same shall be good land, to be applied 
to the intended object by the legislature of the State." 
In this stipulation lay the germ of future state uni- 
versities. 

Early presidents cherished longings more or less 
keen for an institution of higher learning under gov- 
ernment direction. The younger Adams went further 
than some of his predecessors in believing that the 
Constitution already gave ample authority for such a 
national university, with observatories and laboratories, 
and suggested to Congress the wisdom of establishing 
one quickly, because Europe was advancing along simi- 
lar lines with giant strides. 

But this opened up vistas of government control 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 319 

greater than the average American cared to face. 
Even the idea of state universities aided by a grant 
of government land had been looked upon coldly in 
some quarters as an insidious Federal measure, cal- 
culated to breed an aristocracy of learning, — aris- 
tocracy of any sort being the one unforgiveable sin 
in the eyes of democracy. The mountaineer of twenty 
years ago who " thanked the Lord that his blue jeans 
had n't brushed the dust off 'n no college walls, and 
the he wa 'n't all pomped up with the pride of learnin' " 
still reflected this spirit. But neither he nor his 
earlier prototype objected to the building of that school- 
house provided for by " lot No. 16 " and when it was 
built he " aimed " that his children should be well ac- 
quainted with its opportunities. 

It was this small temple of learning, with its meager 
equipment and its curriculum barely extending beyond 
the three R's, that became in reality the great univer- 
sity of the nation. 

The " self-made man," the distinctive gift of the 
United States to the world's dramatis persona:, re- 
ceived a large part of his training and mounted to na- 
tional or international reputation almost invariably by 
means of it. In his childhood he attended it intermit- 
tently as a barefoot lad, working between whiles in the 
fields or at the crossroads store. He managed some- 
how, still working, to get the little added knowledge 
that fitted him to return to it as a teacher, and in that 
capacity entered on its wider course of training. In 
retrospect he was apt to look back upon this season 
of instructive instruction as the most fruitful of his 
life. " I advise every young man to keep school," 
said one of the most experienced of our public men. 
" I acquired more knowledge of human nature while 
I kept school than while I was at the bar, than while 



320 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

I was in the world of politics, or at the courts of Eu- 
rope." 

This was its effect upon the exceptional man. Of 
its effect upon the people as a whole De Tocqueville 
wrote : " I do not believe there is a country in the 
world where in proportion to the population there are 
so few uninstructed, and at the same time so few 
learned individuals. Primary instruction is within the 
reach of everybody ; superior instruction is scarcely to 
be obtained by any." 

Professor Huxley once compared an adequate sys- 
tem of schools to a great ladder, with one end in the 
gutter, the other in the university. We were still pre- 
eminently an agricultural nation. Figuratively speak- 
ing there was no gutter in America, only a great 
plowed field. In the year 1800 only one person in 
twenty had lived in a large town. Even as late as 
i860 the proportion was one in six. The great ma- 
jority of those who tilled the soil stopped with the 
little book learning given them by the district school, 
or at most with what they could pick up in a year or 
two more at the nearest county town " Academy." 

As might be expected, Jefferson, preeminently 
American in his alert, almost meddlesome interest in 
everything that concerned the welfare of his coun- 
trymen, had distinct ideas on education ; and his hobby 
was the raising of the plowed field, — literally, not 
figuratively, — to its rightful place in relation to the 
college. He opposed what he called the Gothic idea 
in intellectual training, — the notion that we must look 
back into the past for inspiration, — and in that child 
of his affections, the University of Virginia, he 
strove to put his ideas into practice. In institutions 
like this " meant chiefly for use " he thought " some 
branches of science formerly esteemed might now be 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 321 

omitted; so might others now vakied in Europe, but 
useless to us for ages to come." Oriental learning 
he placed under this ban and also " almost the whole " 
of the course proposed for the new military academy 
at West Point. In their stead he would exalt agri- 
culture, " the most useful of all the human arts," to 
the rank of a learned profession. It numbered, he 
said, among its handmaids the " most respectable " 
sciences, like chemistry, natural philosophy, mechan- 
ics, mathematics, natural history, and botany. Thus 
his enthusiasm foresaw and blessed a statute placed 
by Congress among the laws of our country twenty- 
six years after his death, — the Agricultural College 
Act of 1862 that gave to each of the States a large 
additional grant of land, the proceeds of which were 
to be used for colleges where " without excluding 
other scientific and classical studies " such studies were 
to be taught " as are related to agriculture and the me- 
chanic arts." 

With the marvelous growth in manufactures after 
the War of 18 12 came a temporary lapse of interest 
in education in the States where manufacture made 
its greatest gains. Statistics for Pennsylvania showed 
that school attendance was very considerably less in 
1823 than in 1820, and the explanation given was 
that many of the children had been taken away " be- 
cause of the high wages, which vary from fifty cents 
to a dollar and a quarter a week according to the de- 
mand for labor by the manufacturers." Pennsylva- 
nia was one of the States where parents were obliged 
to swear that they were paupers before their children 
could receive instruction free. 

An increasing sense of responsibility in matters 
of education followed this first wild and unwise ef- 
fort to reap the fruits of victory. Schools were es- 



322 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tablished for the deaf and dumb and the blind and 
others physically handicapped, — in New England 
even for colored people. And soon enthusiasts were 
going up and down the land calling upon parents to 
give more heed and more money to their children's 
teaching. Horace Mann, secretary of the newly 
founded Massachusetts State Board of Education, the 
foremost of these, invaded the realms of philosophy 
and ethics, the hidden treasures of earth and the mys- 
teries of interstellar space for illustrations to prove 
that the course he advocated was not only wise and 
expedient but a matter of simple justice, a good 
education being a " right " the State owed to every 
citizen. 

Inspired by the eloquence of Mann and his follow- 
ers the country began to see the relation between men- 
tal training and human welfare, and to regard school- 
ing as something more than a personal desire or lux- 
ury. 

His plea that teaching should no longer be consid- 
ered as a temporary employment for rising young 
men, a stop-gap between apprenticeship and mastery 
in some other calling, but as a profession in itself, 
full of dignity and importance, began to bear fruit. 
Some one said that Mann took up the common schools 
in his arms and blessed them. Some one else called 
him the father of the Normal School, though the idea 
of such schools was not new. His influence extended 
beyond New England to schools of all kinds and 
grades, including schools for girls, which up to that 
time had lagged far behind. 

A few men upheld from the first woman's right 
and ability to profit by the same instruction her brother 
received. Judge Joseph Story was one of the few 
in his generation. In the estimation of the masses it 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 323 

was a rash experiment. " All a girl needs to know is 
enough to reckon how much she will have to spin 
to buy a peck of potatoes in case she is left a widow," 
was a callous statement of a widespread belief. Aside 
from the dangers supposed to be involved, there were 
not many fathers in colonial times who could afford 
to ride in coaches and indulge whims in educating 
their girls, as Burr did with his brilliant daughter 
Theodosia, — and .small good her knowledge of mathe- 
matics and languages brought her, poor lady. The 
community as a whole was prosperous because each 
member was rich in industry and courage; but it 
worked for its prosperity and had no time to spare 
for the folly of teaching womenkind things out of 
books. 

All the fine statements in early town-meetings, 
therefore, about the education of " children " and 
" youth " referred to boys alone. Pressure to allow 
girls the same privileges was resented. " A woman 
might come into the room while I was writing a let- 
ter and look over my shoulder and say, * That word is 
spelt wrong.' I should not like that," a city father of 
Plymouth admitted with frankness. 

A compromise was reached by bringing girls to- 
gether under the care of some worthy woman who 
would otherwise be a town charge. For obvious rea- 
sons more attention was paid to manners than to schol- 
arship in such schools. Later girls were allowed to 
attend the same schools as boys but were taught less; 
or were permitted to use the same building in sum- 
mer, under a poorer teacher, when most of the boys 
were at home doing farm work. Gradually they were 
admitted to a wider range of studies, including 
geography and fractions. Then an unheard-of experi- 
ment was tried. A high school for girls was opened 



324 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

in Boston but speedily closed in alarm, for the reason 
that so many clamored for admittance. The expense 
was too great, the public exchequer could not stand it, 
the authorities declared. 

A few private seminaries received girl pupils under 
the old state of things. The Moravians opened a 
school for both girls and boys in Bethlehem, Pennsyl- 
vania, as early as 1749, and Quaker schools welcomed 
both as boarding pupils, though they were not always 
given the same course of study. In New Orleans for 
three quarters of a century before it became American, 
the nuns of the Ursuline Convent had conducted a 
school for young ladies founded by his ineffective 
Majesty Louis XV. Some of the colleges under de- 
nominational control maintained a department for 
young women, but as a rule girls found much more 
difficulty than boys in obtaining anything more than 
primary instruction. If they did so it was usually 
under private guidance. This was especially true in 
the South, where schools of all kinds were fewer. 

Even that travesty of education the " finishing 
school" was at last quickened by Horace Mann's in- 
fluence, and to appeal to the class whose daughters 
had been sent to such institutions Mrs. Emma Hart 
Willard broke away from precedent and founded the 
Troy Female Seminary, where the course of study was 
more sensible, yet feminine enough to convince doubt- 
ers that she did not mean to invade the province of 
man. " Domestic instruction should be considered 
important," she assured them. But she examined her 
pupils in geometry as well. Five thousand girls went 
out from her school during the thirty years of her 
labors, five hundred of them to become teachers in 
their turn. Her sister did similar work in a school 
near Baltimore and these schools in time opened the 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 325 

way for women's colleges, finally achieved more than 
two hundred years after the founding of Harvard. 

Poor as our schools for girls were, we have the 
testimony of Saxe Weimar in 1825 and of Fredrika 
Bremer twenty-five years later, that they excelled those 
abroad. Saxe Weimar found both sexes in the United 
States " very well educated and accomplished." In- 
deed, he was inclined to think the care spent in teach- 
ing mere women an amiable New World eccentricity. 

We had various other eccentricities that he could 
not understand. For one thing it puzzled him that 
Americans who were so clever at inventions should be 
wilHng to waste time and labor upon " things of little 
importance," like a contrivance for peeling apples that 
he saw when he visited the Patent Office at Washing- 
ton, where he was also confronted with ninety-six dif- 
ferent models for making nails, " some of them " he 
admitted " very remarkable." 

That United States Patent Office with its models 
of inventions was a fair index of the interest Amer- 
icans took in things concerning their own lines of work, 
— and every other. It was born in the year that 
Franklin died, when the present Government was 
barely a twelve-month old, and had received models 
and issued patents at a rate that increased from scores 
to hundreds and then to thousands a year. Three 
hundred and six patents were issued in 1806. In 1830, 
4000 or 5000 models were on view. By i860 the 
average was nearly 5000 annually. 

That this increase bears some relation to school 
training seems certain. On the heels of the impulse 
toward better teaching came an epidemic of improve- 
ment in articles of household use; little things, un- 
important according to Saxe Weimar, that neverthe- 
less had far-reaching influence on American fortunes 



326 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and the manners of the entire world. The next fif- 
teen or twenty years, years during which the school 
children influenced by the new generation of teachers 
took up the active work of the nation, witnessed the 
application of machinery to the varied activities of 
daily life: the wizard change that ushered in social 
and industrial conditions of the present day. 

Europe also experienced a wonderful awakening 
in science and mechanics. We held our own, how- 
ever, in practical use of discoveries made abroad and 
in original invention. We had always been an in- 
genious people. Pioneer necessities had sharpened 
our wits into making the most of small resources or 
evolving substitutes for things entirely lacking. 
Learned men like Franklin from the earliest days had 
taken deep interest in science and had thought and 
invented and inquired. Widespread schools now 
brought within the reach of many the knowledge 
hitherto reserved for the few. New teachers, better 
fitted for their work, gave more heed to deep and 
broad principles than those who preceded them could 
have done, and ingenious young minds, responding 
with the directness of youth and the sublime assur- 
ance of democracy, set themselves to solving their lit- 
tle problems by very big rules. They had the impu- 
dence to harness eternal law to pare their apples and 
beat out their shingle-nails for them. 

A hundred conveniences found their way into the 
household. The iron plow, invented in the closing 
years of the eighteenth century, but condemned as 
" poisoning the ground," came into general use. Gas 
was adopted for city lighting. Anthracite coal be- 
came a favorite fuel, though a few tons had here- 
tofore been enough to glut the market of Philadel- 
phia. Machines, big and little, run by hand or foot, 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 327 

by water and by steam, multiplied to cover the earth. 
There were sausage mills and sewing machines ; ma- 
chines that made cloth and machines that made 
watches; the camera, a machine that made pictures; 
the " revolving pistol " ; the screw propeller ; the ro- 
tary printing press; the McCormick reaper; railroads 
and the telegraph; and in between such great inven- 
tions thousands of small ones that turned old ways 
into new. One of the most important of them all, 
and purely American, was the secret of vulcanizing 
rubber, which made that hitherto sticky and evil-smell- 
ing substance a world-wide blessing. 

Of all the inventors of the first half of the nine- 
teenth century, Charles Goodyear, who discovered this 
secret, was the one American who kept unswervingly 
to his original idea. Feeble in health and so poor 
that he was often thrown into prison for debt, after 
the beneficent custom of the time, he worked for thirty 
years with undiminished patience and courage to find 
some means whereby rubber could be deprived of its 
tendency to melt in summer and break in the cold of 
winter. His one thought was rubber. " If you meet 
a man who has on an India-rubber cap, stock, coat, 
vest and shoes, and an India rubber money purse in 
his pocket, without a cent of money in it, that is he," 
was the description given to a man who asked how 
Goodyear might be recognized. But even this devo- 
tion was not enough. It required the whimsical in- 
terposition of accident to point the way. In the ex- 
citement of violent discussion a bit of rubber treated 
with sulphur slipped from his fingers and bounded 
upon a hot stove. To his amazement it did not melt. 
He tacked it outside his door in the bitter cold, and 
next morning found it still pliable. After that, work- 
ing out the problem was merely a question of time. 



328 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

But he reaped little pecuniary reward from his discov- 
ery; probably much less than Daniel Webster, who re- 
ceived a very large fee for those days, $25,000, from 
the manufacturers who held the right to make rubber 
shoes alone. That too is characteristic of American in- 
ventions. To the victors do not belong the spoils. 

The strong bent of our people toward " practical " 
things caused inventions of that kind to be adopted 
and pushed with amazing vigor. In the matter of the 
telegraph, for instance, the chance that the Polk and 
Dallas convention happened to be sitting in Baltimore 
when Morse sent his first message did much to con- 
centrate attention upon it and possibly much to hasten 
its use. Accounts of the convention were read in 
every household, and in these accounts was the story 
of how Senator Silas Wright had sent a message by 
the new contrivance from Washington to the conven- 
tion, declining the nomination for Vice-President. 
The papers said the message was received almost as 
soon as sent. It sounded incredible ; but there it was 
in print. And if it were true ! Every mother's son 
and daughter who read the tale began dreaming of 
how such an invention might affect his or her personal 
life. Four years after this first message was sent, 
3000 miles of telegraph were in operation. Two years 
later the total had mounted to 22,000 miles, and by 
186 1 all the obstacles of deserts and mountains and 
savage tribes were overcome, and New York was 
linked with the Pacific coast. 

The way was more difficult for schemes of less ob- 
vious and immediate use. Everybody felt competent 
to pass upon them. That was another of the privileges 
of democracy. Government bureaus with a scientific 
basis, like the Coast Survey and the Geological Sur- 
vey, which had been added to the administrative de- 




HORACE MANN 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 329 

partments as need for them arose, had a precarious 
tenure of Hfe, entirely at the mercy of " practical " 
legislators who made or withheld appropriations at 
their capricious pleasure. Congressmen gifted with a 
vision beyond immediate outlay were not plentiful. 
Inventions and discoveries that touched their own or 
their constituents' projects might interest them, but 
even admitting the good of scientific bureaus and re- 
search, some of them objected to spending the money 
of the taxpayers for such purposes. The Coast Sur- 
vey, obviously the most practical of them all, was 
discontinued for a number of years in spite of elo- 
quent appeals against " putting out the eyes of the 
ocean." 

Many good citizens questioned the wisdom of our 
Government in accepting a bequest like that of the 
lonely Englishman who left the United States his for- 
tune " to found at Washington under the name of the 
Smithsonian Institution an establishment for the in- 
crease and diffusion of knowledge among men." 
Even a man with so clear and unprejudiced a mind 
as Lincoln confessed that up to the time he became 
President and talked with Joseph Henry, then head of 
the Smithsonian, he was inclined to regard that institu- 
tion as a rather useless government luxury. " But," 
he said, " it must be a grand school if it produces such 
thinkers as he." 

As for grants of government money to aid in carry- 
ing on experiments, they encountered much opposition 
when they were asked for. " Machinery ! " thundered 
one congressman in answer to the plea of another for 
such a project. " Yes. You can do this and that 
and the other with machinery. We hear a lot about 
machinery in these days. But, Mr. Speaker, there 's 
one thing it can't do. You can't raise bull calves by 



330 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

machinery! " And to a certain type of mind that was 
conclusive. 

PoHticians were very human; so were the scientists 
in the government bureaus. Both being highly 
charged with ideas of equality and of their own im- 
portance, differences between them were apt to strike 
out sparks of picturesque criticism. Very typical is 
the story Henry Wise told about his friend Ferdinand 
R. Hassler, one of the learned foreigners who came 
to this country through Jefferson's influence. He ran 
the base line of our surveys and remained for many 
years in the employ of the Government in one capacity 
or another. He was a fine old man with a leonine 
head, a heart that feared nothing, and a foreign ac- 
cent that grew noticeable under excitement. In Van 
Buren's term charges of extravagance were rife, and 
there was strong pressure for economy in unpopular 
government bureaus. Hassler was then at the head 
of the Coast Survey. His son had been made his as- 
sistant and was also drawing a government salary. 
Hassler, moreover, kept a carriage, a queer vehicle 
hung on springs in a way to guard against the least 
jar. He was summoned before the Secretary of the 
Treasury to explain these crimes. He answered that 
the carriage was for his " babies," meaning his scien- 
tific instruments. 

The Secretary objected that they did not need to 
ride about Washington, and that when he took them 
into the field they could be better transported by rail- 
way. 

" No, no. Tat jarring makes dem nervous, puts 
dem out of order und unfits dem for exact use. They 
shall not be vexed by your railroad cars." 

" Well then, your salary, Mr. Hassler ; and that of 
your son. You and he in one family receive $8,000, 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 331 

whilst I, the Secretary, get but $6,000 for superintend- 
ing the whole Department." 

" Well, tarn it, tat is right ! " he thundered in an- 
swer. " A Bresident of the United States can make 
a Segredary of the Dreasury, but it took a God Al- 
mighty to make a Hassler ! " 

The country seemed confident that God Almighty 
had made a nation of Hasslers. Lawmakers who 
wished to tamper with the Government's scientific in- 
struments, farmers who glibly suggested " a little im- 
provement " in any intricate machine that came to their 
notice, lawyers who dabbled in mechanics, artists who 
played with electricity, were as plentiful as blackber- 
ries, as much a part of American life as the Fourth 
of July. Humbleness of mind was not a national 
trait, but agility of mind was. Franklin's inventive 
genius roved like lightning from stoves to circulating 
libraries, from experiments in vegetarianism to a self- 
supporting postal service and a paid police force. 
Monticello was full of ingenious devices of Jefferson's 
own contriving. Lincoln patented a device for lifting 
steamboats over shoals, while he was yet unknown to 
fame, and in his busiest and most harassed days got 
rest and pleasure from examining the inventions of 
others. Invention was a national habit. 

It is often the by-product of a man's brain that 
brings him fame, while those nearest him think lightly 
of his greatest achievement. Eli Whitney's friends 
considered his factory at New Haven for making 
guns more important than the cotton-gin he invented 
" by request " of his hostess during a visit South. 
His family was justified in so thinking, for it was by 
means of this factory that he recouped the losses 
brought upon him by his famous invention. 

In no department of knowledge did more revolu- 



332 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tionary changes take place during those fruitful years 
than in medicine. We are told that colonial medicine 
was empirical and founded on nostrums. So for that 
matter was medicine everywhere, only a few great dis- 
coveries, scarcely more than one to a hundred years, 
rising above its dead level of superstition and guess- 
work. The seventeenth century saw Harvey's discov- 
ery of the circulation of the blood. At the close of 
the eighteenth century Dr. Jenner announced his dis- 
covery of vaccination. The first half of the nineteenth 
century brought the mercy of anesthesia to suffering 
humanity; chloroform in England, ether in America, 
almost simultaneously. The latter half was to bring 
us the boon and the plague of the germ theory. 

When we read of the many important additions 
made to medical knowledge and resources between 
1800 and 1850; additions to the pharmacopeia; the in- 
vention of instruments like the stethoscope ; changes 
in surgery made possible by the total unconsciousness 
of the patient under the tortures of the operating table ; 
the making of cunning artificial limbs to supersede 
peg-legs without form or joint ; advances in dentistry 
and in curing diseases of the eye, until then believed 
incurable ; and the amelioration of small but persistent 
miseries in the way of taking doses, so that the worth 
of medicine was no longer measured by its bad taste, 
— the wonder grows that human beings ever survived 
the crude and heroic methods in vogue before the nine- 
teenth century came in. 

American doctors and patients of an earlier time 
had no lack of courage or experiment. The national 
agility of mind worked in this also. John Adams 
when young formed one of a party who went volun- 
tarily into a pest house to remain several weeks and 
have it out with the smallpox " as was the custom be- 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 333 

fore vaccination was introduced." In 1844, Dr. Wells 
of Hartford had gas administered to himself while 
a tooth was extracted to test its power as an anes- 
thetic; and America's greatest contribution to medical 
science, the use of ether, was the result of experiments 
in Boston by Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson, a dentist 
and an eminent scientist. 

President Jackson, taken ill when he went north in 
1833 to receive his degree from Harvard, was put 
to bed and thoroughly bled, a fashionable but cjues- 
tionable remedy to apply to that thin elderly gentle- 
man; but under the impetus of new discoveries such 
practices speedily languished and a body of well-trained 
and sensible doctors grew up in the United States. 
There was plenty for them to do. Our ill-considered 
ways of preparing the foodstuffs Nature had provided, 
our national liking for hot and under-baked bread ; and 
our haste in eating as in everything else, had fastened 
indigestion upon us as a national disease. Our na- 
tional tendency to jump at conclusions, to make a lit- 
tle learning bridge much ignorance and to expect 
marvels, made a wide and easy path also for the quack 
and the impostor. With American optimism it was 
believed that drugs and chemistry could accomplish 
anything. All sorts of new medical schools were 
eagerly welcomed, from Dr. Hahnemann's homeo- 
pathy, with its theory that like cures like and its 
remedies comfortably concealed in " little nothing pow- 
ders " and tiny globules of sugar, to others whose use- 
fulness has not been demonstrated by experience. A 
habit of believing what was seen in print if it was 
stated with sufficient emphasis, helped immensely the 
success of remedies that fed on advertising and hu- 
man credulity. A flourishing business sprang up in 
patent medicines, and patent systems of medicine, like 



334 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

the much-heralded Thompsonian method that treated 
disease by sweating and purging in a way drastic 
enough to convince the most miserly that he was getting 
his money's worth. 

Very slowly did the idea of preventing ailments 
rather than curing them, creep in. At first it seemed 
both a profanation of science and an impertinence to- 
ward the Almighty to hint that " dyspepsy " was the 
price of unwise eating and not a cross to be en- 
dured with pious resignation, if it could not be cured 
by something out of a bottle. Or that while pestilence 
was undoubtedly a punishment of sin it was only the 
uninteresting sin of slack city housekeeping. Volney 
who visited us in 1795 prophesied that the United 
States would have to learn to pay attention to pav- 
ing, drainage, and the like if it wished to escape the 
ravages of epidemics like the " putrid fever " that 
raged through Philadelphia in the summer of 1793. 
Yet so slow was the public to believe this that we are 
told on good authority, that as late as 1842 the entire 
milk supply for the city of New York came from cows 
kept in city sheds. 

Heaven knows we are far enough yet from perfec- 
tion in such matters. Heaven knows too that the 
changes that came to pass as the result of the awaken- 
ing of physical science and the quickening of inven- 
tion in the early years of the nineteenth century have 
led us into strange paths, some of them veritable ciils 
de sac. Who would have dreamed that the colleges 
of the country, established by the pious Puritans to 
confound " ye ould deluder Satan " were to become 
hotbeds of free-thinking that boldly denied the exist- 
ence of Satan himself. That clever inventions, each 
one a saving of labor and of time, taken all together 
were to overturn old ways of thrift and bring about 



SCHOOLS AND INVENTIONS 335 

reckless extravagance. That the labor-saving device 
of the cotton-gin was to fasten the shackles of labor 
upon millions of human beings, black and white, and 
become a juggernaut in politics, rending and destroy- 
ing. Or that the early mills, steam heated, white-cur- 
tained, blooming with flowers and happy faces Hke 
those of Lowell, were to degenerate into poisonous and 
soul-atrophying prisons. In short, that the blessing of 
modern invention was to prove the Frankenstein of 
modern industry. 



CHAPTER XVI • 

A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 

VAN BUREN'S administration has been wittily 
likened to a parenthesis, because its history 
can be read hurriedly in a low tone of voice, 
or omitted altogether, without disturbing the continu- 
ity. This is more clever than true. His reputation 
as President suffered equally from his own faults and 
those of his predecessor. All his life he was busy 
being a politician ; but he never lost his intention of 
becoming a statesman. Born a poor man's son, he 
became a rich man. Blessed with a good mind, he 
amassed a good library and made excellent use of 
both. He was handicapped by a small and rotund 
person which he kept with neatness and elegance, but 
which no amount of grooming could make imposing. 
He took on readily the polish of the world and be- 
came so adept in pleasing that his manner brought dis- 
trust upon his intentions. 

John Quincy Adams, critical as he was, had to ad- 
mit to his diary, that though he detested Van Buren 
the magistrate, an acquaintance of twenty years led 
him to respect Van Buren the man. Van Buren be- 
lieved in and practised " politics," but he aimed to keep 
politics as clean as he conveniently could. Chevalier, 
the French traveler, thought he aspired to be the Amer- 
ican Talleyrand. Josiah Quincy remarked that he 
might have posed for a statue of diplomacy. Gen- 
eral Scott, who claimed to have set the Presidential 

336 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 337 

bee to buzzing in Van Buren's ambitions, said that 
few men have ever suffered less wear and tear of 
body and mind from irascible emotions. Others bru- 
tally called him thick-skinned. Carl Schurz summed 
up his character and achievements by calling him " the 
finest pattern of baby-kissing statesman." He la- 
bored so hard to produce a good impression that he 
overshot the mark. And on stepping into the Presi- 
dency, he stepped into a hornet's nest of problems in- 
herited from Jackson that might have proved the undo- 
ing of the wisest and most popular of men. 

The bonfires kindled in jollification over his elec- 
tion had scarcely died into ashes before there was an 
equal cooling of enthusiasm on the part of those who 
elected him. His own State gave him an unprece- 
dented majority but turned against him almost at the 
outset ; and in matters entirely beyond his control he 
had the worst of luck. He had not been President a 
month before the great panic of 1837 began its devas- 
tating course. Even the elements conspired against 
prosperity. Two years before the panic a great fire 
had ravaged the business section of New York. 
Though the loss was very heavy not a merchant had 
failed in consequence; but this strain left them less 
able to withstand business depression ; and bad har- 
vests, following close upon the heels of the panic, added 
greatly to the distress. 

Commercial failures began in New York about a 
fortnight after Jackson turned the office over to his 
successor. Almost a hundred firms went down in 
the first week. After that, failures were too numerous 
for even local papers to notice in detail. Before the 
end of the month the same state of things extended 
over the entire country; prices went tumbling; and 
business fell to ruin on all sides. The panic was espe- 



338 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

cially severe in the South, where cotton that had been 
selHng at twenty cents dropped to ten, to rise again in 
the course of two years to sixteen and then sink to 
five ; for this serious condition was not to pass quickly. 

Fortunately the winter of 1837-38 was mild, but it 
saw much suffering. The years between 18 16 and 
1820, known as the hard times of eighteen hundred 
and starve to death, did not approach this season of 
scarcity. Indeed, this was the first time that our peo- 
ple experienced the hardships of modern urban life. 
Numbers of laborers, unskilled in trades and unused to 
the ways of the cities, flocked to the larger towns. A 
house-to-house canvass had to be made in New York 
to collect funds to relieve the distress ; and, as always, 
it was the poor who gave most in proportion to their 
means, men who earned only five dollars a week shar- 
ing their wages with the " really poor." But it was 
not charity these people wanted. " We are not beg- 
gars. Give us work. Why can we have nothing to 
do?" was the pitiful plea heard on all sides. With 
the coming of spring the suffering due to inclement 
weather disappeared, but the real situation was scarcely 
altered. The two classes to feel the pinch most se- 
verely were the laborers who had to work for their 
daily bread and the farmers who produced that bread. 
Foodstuffs were either tragically high or almost with- 
out value, as they were considered from the viewpoint 
of producer or consumer. Even with beef at two 
and a half cents a pound and eggs at three cents a 
dozen, or a dozen chickens to be had for half a dol- 
lar, mouths had to go unfed while good laborers 
hunted vainly for work at a dollar a week with board. 

The disease ran its course and the depression did 
not reach its lowest ebb until 1842, though long be- 
fore that the wild panic of the first weeks had given 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 339 

way to a dogged pessimistic endurance. It is true 
that Jackson's meddling with the National Bank was 
looked upon as the chief cause of the distress, but 
Van Buren was of the same household of political 
faith and had promised to tread in the footsteps of 
his illustrious predecessor. He was importuned to 
bring back the good times, and because business de- 
pression did not instantly take wings at his bidding, 
criticism of him and his measures assumed unwar- 
ranted and steadily growing proportions. He was 
called a British tool because he did not encourage preju- 
dice against England in troubles that arose on the 
Canadian border, and he was held responsible for all 
the evils of the spoils system. 

He was accused of gross extravagance, a set of gold 
spoons said to have been purchased for the White 
House assuming as great political proportions as John 
Quincy Adams's mythical billiard-table ; and the charge 
that he was receiving the Presidential salary in hard 
money and living in luxury while thousands of his 
fellow-countrymen starved brought not only caustic 
comment but a derisive mob almost to the doors of the 
White House. 

He did everything he could to bring back prosper- 
ity, but he could as easily have brought back the golden 
age of Pericles. Believing, as did his critics, that 
Jackson's financial measures had much to do with the 
hard times, he called an extra session of Congress and 
proposed that for the first time in its history the 
United States establish an independent treasury and 
assume full and exclusive charge of its own funds. As 
this was an entirely new departure it drew the criticism 
of all conservatives for that reason, in addition to 
the opposition of his political enemies and of those 
who distrusted him on personal grounds. Some 



340 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

urged that an independent treasury would give the 
Government too much power. Others said it would 
lock up bullion that ought to be in circulation. Oth- 
ers still failed to see wherein notes issued by a 
United States Treasury would be superior to notes 
issued by banks, which already covered the land with 
waste paper. Clay and Webster saw in the new 
scheme vast possibilities of villainy. It was pro- 
claimed " the first step toward an Executive Bank with 
Tyranny as its aim," and at a monster meeting of pro- 
test, some patriot with a talent for epithets invented 
for Van Buren the mouth-filling title of Machiavel- 
lian Belshazzar. The poor man was reaping the 
harvest of his own too industrious planting. He had 
so successfully pulled wires through a lifetime that 
large numbers of his countrymen could not believe him 
sincere, and suspected a trick in this innocent, and as 
the sequel proved, perfectly workable scheme. 

After more than two years' discussion the bill 
passed and Van Buren affixed his signature on the 
Fourth of July, 1840. But in spite of this apparent 
victory he labored against constantly increasing oppo- 
sition. When the time came for active work in the 
campaign of 1840, he and the Vice-President, Richard 
M. Johnson, were renominated by the Democrats, but 
the Whigs carried things all their own way. 

From the moment of Van Buren's election in 1836, 
Clay's supporters had been planning to elect their 
perennial candidate in 1840. Popular dissatisfaction 
with the Democrats made a Whig victory at this elec- 
tion almost certain and it seemed that Clay's ambition 
was at last to be gratified. The Whig national con- 
vention met early and Clay, confidently expecting to 
be the nominee but mindful of the proprieties, sent 
word to his friends to sacrifice him if necessary to the 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 341 

welfare of the party. They tried for three days to 
bring about his nomination, but fruitless ballotings 
convinced them that his very prominence and the num- 
ber of political battles in which he had fought with 
vigor would work against his polling as many votes, 
either inside or outside the party, as a less conspicuous 
candidate might do. They took him at his word, 
therefore, and nominated William Henry Harrison, 
to Clay's very great astonishment and chagrin. In the 
first moments of wrathful disappointment he told a 
companion that his friends were not worth the powder 
it would take to blow them up. But his better self soon 
triumphed and rising to the occasion he did valiant work 
for the man who had supplanted him. 

Disappointment was not confined to Clay. It was 
shared by many members of the nominating conven- 
tion and by thousands of Clay's admirers throughout 
the country. John Tyler of Virginia was reported to 
have shed tears, whereupon the leaders o'f the conven- 
tion had the inspiration to nominate him for Vice-Presi- 
dent. They did it not so much on account of this dis- 
play of emotion as because he had been a partizan of 
Jackson until alienated by Jackson's action against the 
Bank and on Nullification. He had resigned his seat 
in the Senate rather than vote for the "Force Bill. This 
endeared him to the South and he was therefore an 
ideal candidate to bring Southern sympathizers and 
disaffected Democrats to the Whig standard. 

Harrison and Winfield Scott had been the alterna- 
tives to Clay's selection for first place on the ticket. 
Both were successful soldiers and intensely loyal 
Whigs, but as different in other respects as men of 
the same race could well be. Scott was an aristocrat 
and an autocrat ; a man of such explosive temper that 
he could not play a game of cards with a group of 



342 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

friendly children without frightening them half out 
of their wits ; nor could he keep peace in his own house- 
hold. It was said that he and his wife " were never 
in love with each other except when apart." Even 
in the matter of naming their four daughters the pair 
could not agree. He gave them Roman names; she 
ones that she was pleased to call Christian. " Camilla 
does thus and so," he would announce ; to which she 
would answer with barbed intent, " Yes, Adeline al- 
ways does." 

Gallant and efficient as he was, this was manifestly 
not the man to nominate in a campaign where con- 
ciliation was necessary; so the convention wisely 
passed him over for Harrison, a man of extreme sim- 
plicity of manners and of little wealth. He was sixty- 
seven years old, as old as Washington had been at 
the time of his death, and he had been in public 
life since before the beginning of the century, having 
come as delegate to Congress from the Northwest 
Territory in 1799, and served as governor of Indiana 
Territory from 1801 to 1813. It was during this pe- 
riod that he won his military laurels, by defeating the 
Prophet, brother of Tecumseh, at the battle of Tippe- 
canoe in 181 1, and again two years later by his vic- 
tory over the combined forces of the English and 
Tecumseh himself in the battle of the Thames, where 
the British commander fled, and Tecumseh met his 
death. 

Harrison had been rewarded by elections to both 
branches of Congress and a more or less complimen- 
tary nomination to the Presidency in 1836. John 
Quincy Adams appointed him to a diplomatic post, 
presumably on the theory that a man who could cope 
with the wily savage would be a match for the wily 
diplomat. Jackson summarily deprived him of this 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 343 

office in the first days of his poHtical housecleaning, 
and Harrison came home from Colombia to take np 
again the Hfe of a farmer in Ohio. His record con- 
tained nothing distinctively Whig or Democratic. It 
was that of a plain, efficient, American citizen, illu- 
minated by his success against the dreaded Indians and 
that rarest of American military triumphs, a land vic- 
tory in the War of 1812. 

The Whigs were clever enough not to complicate 
the issue. Their convention formulated no party 
platform, and issued no address to voters. Deprived 
of the usual statement of party principles against 
which to direct their attack, the Democrats were driven 
to personalities. The unlucky sneer of a Baltimore 
paper gave the characteristic turn to the campaign. 
Provide Harrison a pension of $2000 a year and a 
barrel of hard cider, this paper declared, and he would 
spend the rest of his days contentedly in his log cabin. 
The Whigs took this up as the challenge of wealth, 
construing it into a statement that only men rich 
enough to live in fine houses and drink wine should 
aspire to the Presidency. That was a proposition 
upon which Whigs and dissatisfied Democrats, anti- 
sub-Treasury and anti-State Bank men. States Rights 
partizans. National Republicans, strict construction- 
ists, latitudinarians, and all the varied antis and outs 
could unite in vigorous denial. And unite they did in 
a campaign the like of which had not been seen before. 
" The Union of the Whigs for the sake of the Union " 
was their official motto. Their real rallying point was 
the humble log cabin with a raccoon skin nailed to its 
door. This they made their campaign emblem ; and 
a barrel of hard cider standing hospitably open near by 
did not lessen its attraction. 

More enthusiasm than intellect went into the 



344 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

speeches and the shouting. Political gatherings were 
numbered, not by hundreds or even thousands, but by 
the square acre. In the Whig processions, which were 
measured by the mile, battalions of men carried corn- 
husk brooms and transparencies that echoed old slo- 
gans of 1812, like "Don't Give up the Ship;" while 
other transparencies, lauding " The Farmer President," 
" The People's Candidate," " The Hero of Tippe- 
canoe," escorted real canoes and models of Fort Meigs 
mounted with real guns, and log cabins on wheels from 
which real cider flowed the length of the route. Cam- 
paign papers were dramatic with woodcuts of Harrison 
battle scenes highly idealized, and vocal with music 
printed on the pictured sides of log cabins ; and similar 
triumphs of journalism foreign to the habits of the 
moment. One particularly successful campaign paper 
called the " Log Cabin " was published at Albany by a 
young man named Horace Greeley. It had an unprec- 
edented circulation which could have been greatly in- 
creased had his facilities for printing and mailing 
allowed. Brass bands and processions filled the streets 
from dawn to midnight, political songs filled the air 
with a lilt and swing that echoed for many a day. 
Even after the leaves of that campaign summer had 
been dead for forty years the writer knew a little dog 
named " Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," in honor of the 
Whig nominees of 1840. 

Lincoln's advice to a young friend in the campaign 
of 1848, "Let every one play the part he can play 
best, some sing, some speak, and all holler," was 
followed to the letter at this earlier date. Even the 
women took part, which by the way also accorded 
with Lincoln's advice. A carefully guarded family 
tradition of some friends of Ohio descent tells how 
their grandmother saved the honor of the town of 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 345 

Wooster in that state when General Harrison ap- 
peared unexpectedly to speak. He had been billed to 
attend a meeting in a neighboring village, where all 
the Whigs of the surrounding country had gathered to 
hear him. Through some mistake he found his way to 
Wooster instead. Only Democrats were left and 
not many men of that faith. But this lady, quick to 
see and to act, grasped the situation, received the candi- 
date cordially though herself an ardent Democrat, hur- 
riedly notified all the citizens that remained, male and 
female, and got together an adequate audience. When 
upbraided for doing this for the candidate of the oppo- 
sition, she answered with spirit that General Harrison 
was more than the mere candidate of the Whig party. 
He was a candidate for President of the United States, 
the greatest office in the gift of the people, and as such 
worthy of all honor; and she asked scornfully if the 
principles and convictions of her Democratic friends 
were so weak that they feared to listen to the other side. 
Van Buren and his party labored heroically against 
their fate. They had campaign papers of their own 
and good speakers and large meetings, but the memory 
of four lean years was against them, and the Whigs 
distanced them in songs and electioneering emblems 
and mottoes that appealed to popular sympathies. 
One of the trump cards of the Whigs was a campaign 
document, a reprint of a speech delivered in the House 
of Representatives by Charles Ogle in which he de- 
scribed " the Royal Splendor of the President's Pal- 
ace " in words that not only magnified the gold spoons 
to heroic proportions, but did wonders with the very 
modest fittings of the White House and told of 
gardeners paid with the people's money, whose sole 
duty was to pluck up burdock and sheep sorrel in the 
grounds that surrounded it. Honest farmers gasped 



346 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

in astonishment. In vain the Democrats denied it. 
In vain they used equal exaggeration in statements 
about Harrison's tottering seniHty. In vain they ac- 
cused him of having advocated the seUing of white 
convicts to slavery while he was governor of Indiana. 
The Whig songs which, it must be confessed, had an 
uncommon amount of vim and " go " for campaign 
songs, took on added glee and derisiveness as the cam- 
paign advanced. ** Van, Van, is a used-up man ! " the 
Whigs shouted at their meetings. And the election 
proved that this was true. Harrison received almost 
four times as many votes as the Machiavellian Belshaz- 
zar, a piece of news eagerly awaited at outlying mail 
stations by bands of young men mounted and ready 
to gallop away, who passed it on to remotest hamlets 
in races that rivaled the one which brought the good 
news to Aix. 

Part of the extraordinary enthusiasm and abandon 
of this campaign was mere reaction from the depres- 
sion of hard times. The country was still in its " cub " 
stage. Youthful physical energy had to have an out- 
let. The shouting and the speeches over, it subsided 
to more normal actions and took up again its sobering 
daily tasks. 

Van Buren kept his head and his manners in defeat. 
His message to Congress the last year of his term was 
stronger and better than any he had written before; 
and in social courtesy he heaped coals of fire upon the 
heads of such of his opponents as remembered the 
flight of Adams and his cabinet when the Democrats 
came into power. He invited General Harrison to the 
White House and entertained him as his guest for sev- 
eral weeks before the inauguration. 

The President-elect was old, though far from being 
the doddering old man described by the Democrats in 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 347 

the heat of the campaign; and he was not as strong as 
he himself liked to believe. The excitement of the 
canvass had w^orn upon him, and the fatigue and ex- 
posure of a journey to Washington in inclement 
v^eather drew heavily upon his remaining strength. 
Whigs flocked to Washington in droves to ask favors 
of him, "every man with a raccoon's tail in his hat, 
tugging at the string of the latch," as though the White 
House were indeed a log cabin. To receive and sat- 
isfy these was in itself no light labor. On inaugura- 
tion day, which was cold and stormy, the new old Pres- 
ident addressed the people for an hour in the open air. 
What he told them was not very satisfactory, except, 
perhaps, to himself. An anecdote of the period tells 
how Webster was asked by Harrison to revise the 
inaugural address before its delivery. He returned 
from the ordeal looking so tired that his sympathetic 
landlady asked if anything unpleasant had happened. 
" You would think something had happened if you 
knew what I have done," Webster replied with convic- 
tion. " I have killed seventeen Roman pro-consuls ! " 
But a good many classical worthies escaped, and those 
who heard the address learned more about ancient 
history than they did about the incoming President's 
ideas on questions of the day. This may have been 
craft or caution on Harrison's part, or because he was 
a generation behind his time in literary composition. 

That he did not lack a will of his own was soon 
demonstrated by his break with Clay. Clay had been 
offered the office of secretary of state but declined. 
It was then offered to Webster who accepted. Clay, 
however, felt himself at liberty to make suggestions. 
These Harrison resented, believing that Clay presumed 
upon his high place in the party to influence him. 
" Mr. Clay, you forget that I am President," he re- 



348 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

minded him before he had been in ojffice many days, 
intimating that it would be better in future to make 
such suggestions in writing. " It was a terrible disap- 
pointment," wrote Clay's biographer, " first to be 
thrown aside by the convention of his party for a sec- 
ond-rate man, and then to be thrown aside by that sec- 
ond-rate man." Deeply hurt, he left Washington and 
never saw Harrison again. 

Pressure of work and pressure of visitors lengthened 
the President's official day until after midnight; and 
contrary to the entreaties of his friends, he followed 
his lifelong habits of early rising to go to market or to 
walk in the morning air without an overcoat. Fatigue 
and exposure brought on a chill which developed into 
pneumonia and he died on April fourth, exactly one 
month from the date of his inauguration. 

It was the first time a President had died in office. 
The country was profoundly moved. Even Harri- 
son's political opponents acknowledged his life of pub- 
lic usefulness and the great mihtary service he had 
rendered his country. All the houses of Washington, 
from rich to humble, displayed tokens of mourning on 
the day when a black open car with white horses, nod- 
ding plumes, heaps of flowers, and a wealth of funeral 
pomp that contrasted strangely with his simple life, 
carried his body on its last earthly journey. 

Tradition has it that while Harrison lay dying he 
addressed some imaginary person in these words: 
** Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of 
the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask no 
more." After events made this seem a prophetic 
vision, for Tyler was a Democrat at heart and soon 
showed his true colors. 

He was at his country place in lower Virginia when 
summoned to the office of President. He had felt it 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 349 

indelicate to hasten to Washington unsummoned ; and 
the cabinet, though convinced that Harrison could not 
survive, felt equal delicacy about calling him while the 
doctors held out " professional hope." 

His handsome face was very thoughtful as he took 
his place as chief mourner at the funeral of his prede- 
cessor ; " not as if he were thinking of what was then 
and there passing," an observer noted, " but as if he 
were laying deep plans for the future." 

The country was most anxious to learn what those 
plans might be. He had been elected as a Whig. 
Would he remain true to the party that placed him in 
power, or would he return to the Democrats and em- 
brace this opportunity, divinely offered it seemed, to 
rescue the country from the madness of the last elec- 
tion? Particularly would he save it from the " threat- 
ened usurpation of a Moneyed Monster?" — meaning 
the National Bank now being urged by Clay to replace 
Van Buren's scheme for a national treasury. 

A little knot of friends, mostly Virginians, so few in 
number that Clay contemptuously called them the cor- 
poral's guard, rallied about him to urge this course 
and to strengthen his resolution. Beyond these he 
found few supporters in either party. Congress was 
speedily estranged by his action on the National Bank. 
He vetoed Clay's bill, but at the same time indicated 
the features of one that might meet his approval. 
Congress obligingly passed a bill framed upon these 
suggestions. He outraged them by also vetoing that. 
He had never in words promised to aid in establishing 
a new National Bank, and it is at least debatable 
whether he did not do the country a real service in 
preventing it ; but feeling ran so high that while Dem- 
ocratic senators called upon him in a body to congratu- 
late him on his courage and his patriotic conduct, 



350 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

a crowd gathered outside the Executive Mansion and 
made known its disapproval by catcalls, the beating of 
drums, unhinging gates, and such generally disgrace- 
ful behavior that a congressional investigation was 
ordered. It was in the course of debate upon this in- 
vestigation that Clay indulged in that clever satire 
of his upon the meeting inside the White House, 
dramatizing the supposed speeches that passed between 
the Whig President and his various Democratic ad- 
mirers, in such masterly fashion that even those cari- 
catured joined in the applause. 

Convinced that Tyler had no intention of remaining 
a Whig, if he had ever been one, the Whig cabinet 
resigned in disgust, with the single and very important 
exception of Webster, who remained in the State De- 
partment some months longer for the purpose of con- 
cluding the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that defined 
the boundary line between Maine and Canada. When 
this was finished, he also withdrew and Calhoun suc- 
ceeded him as secretary of state. This severed the 
administration's last pretense of Whig affiliations. 
But even after the sensational break with the party that 
elected him, Tyler failed to reestablish himself in full 
confidence of the Democrats. To the end of his term 
he was distrusted by one party and execrated by the 
other. He was nevertheless very active, and having 
the interests of the South at heart, the project to annex 
Texas became his ruling ambition. 

That coveted portion of Mexico lay just west of 
Louisiana. It took its name from an old Indian word 
signifying " friends " ; and for a quarter of a century, 
in fact ever since Philip Nolan and his band had made 
their way into it from Natchez in 1800 to capture wild 
horses, and had themselves been captured by Spanish 
authority, It had been looked upon with more than 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 351 

friendly eyes by ambitious and adventurous spirits who 
made rendezvous in the Mississippi town. 

Napoleon had left the boundaries of Louisiana 
vague " as a safeguard." This gave opportunity for 
Americans to claim more or less of Texas as United 
States territory ; but all such claims had been officially 
given up by the treaty of 18 19 with Spain, when one 
condition of the Florida purchase was our acceptance 
of the Sabine River as the western limit of Louisiana. 

Popular feeling in the Southwest strongly resented 
this on several grounds. One argument was that it 
brought an alien frontier too close to our great artery 
of western travel, the Mississippi River. Another was 
that England would very likely get possession of the 
territory claimed by us, if we did not, and use it as a 
base from which to attack us and our institutions. 
This meant attack the institution of slavery; for 
England was strongly antislavery. The administra- 
tions of John Quincy Adams and Jackson tried in vain 
to arrange the matter by purchase, offering a choice of 
several boundaries and terms. Mexico had become 
independent shortly after our treaty of 18 19 was con- 
cluded with Spain, but insisted that these provisions 
concerning the boundary be strictly carried out. 

Meantime successive unstable Mexican governments 
made grants of land to Americans, and settlement of 
the coveted region began in earnest a very few years 
after Clay's Missouri Compromise of 1820 limited the 
amount of United States territory still open to slavery. 
Whatever the reasons they might urge, slavery was the 
underlying fact that made the minds of Southerners 
so hospitable to Texas. Southern statesmen were al- 
ready looking forward to the time when land would be 
needed out of which to make the new slave States abso- 
lutely necessary to the South if she meant to hold her 



352 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

own against the ever growing North. Here provi- 
dentially lay a stretch of country as large as the whole 
Louisiana purchase, waiting to fill this need. It was 
true that slavery was already forbidden by Mexican 
law; but it was equally true that settlers from the 
United States ignored this and took their chattels with 
them. It was also true that when Texas was once 
within the United States she could change this law to 
suit herself. 

The region had few inhabitants besides the Ameri- 
cans, who were racially out of sympathy with the Mexi- 
can people and with their rulers who climbed to supreme 
though brief authority, one after another, by Latin- 
American methods of revolution and assassination. 
A few years of life under such government brought 
them to the point of rebellion on their own account un- 
der the leadership of the picturesque and effective Hous- 
ton, a character only to be found in such a young and 
crude society. Personally very brave if very dissolute, 
his career had covered the wide range of lawyer, Indian 
agent, gallant soldier in the War of 1812, member of 
Congress, governor of Tennessee, Cherokee chief, and 
bridegroom who fled from his newly acquired white 
wife back to the comforts of Indian life, before he gath- 
ered to himself a handful of kindred spirits and passed 
on to make history in Texas. His companions in the 
enterprise were by no means all bona fide residents. 
Scenting trouble, many of them had come across the 
border to help their friends and their acts could not be 
justified by law, national or international. They were 
typical frontiersmen of the Southwest, as boisterous 
and turbulent as the Mexicans themselves though in a 
different way, — " the glory of the race of rangers " as 
Whitman sang of them. Whatever their shortcom- 
ings, they had a chivalrous code of their own and lived 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 353 

and died by it unafraid. Fannin could have escaped 
massacre with his 350 at GoHad had he not felt in 
honor bound to await the return of a detachment sent 
out to rescue some settlers; and when the Mexicans 
made a shambles of the Alamo, that old adobe fortress 
that had once been a church, killing its defenders to the 
last man, each little group died where it stood, isolated 
but heroic. Bowie, the inventor of the favorite 
frontier knife, was one who fell in this way. Another 
was Davy Crockett, who was found after this day of 
carnage, face upward, still grasping his weapon, with 
a heap of twenty or more Mexicans dead before him. 

Although the battle of San Jacinto by which the 
Texans gained practical independence in April, 1836, 
was so ridiculous in detail that its story reads like some 
distorted bad dream, it was fateful for the country. 
Houston was retreating when he heard that the Mex- 
ican army was temporarily divided by a freshet. He 
suddenly turned and attacked the vanguard, though it 
outnumbered his men two to one. To reach the place 
of battle his army made use of a timber raft and one 
leaky scow. The cavalry horses swam. Transport- 
ing the artillery was no serious matter, since his chief 
if not his only battery consisted of two six-pounder 
guns, called the " Twin Sisters." The army band, one 
fife and one drum, led the advance, playing not martial 
music but the popular air, " Will you come into the 
bower?" The battleground itself was surrounded by 
marshes, with only one bridge leading to safety. 
After the last man had passed over, Deaf Smith, a cele- 
brated scout, dashed up and dramatically announced 
that he had destroyed that. There were 200 bayonets 
for a little less than 800 men in Houston's army. 
Santa Anna's force which so greatly outnumbered them 
was behind breastworks, but the Texans felt no regret 



354 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

for the bridge and entertained no thought of retreat. 
Shouting, " Remember the Alamo " and '* Remember 
Goliad," they rushed upon the Mexicans, who secure in 
their position, their greater numbers, and the late hour 
of the day, were taken off their guard and completely 
surprised. Santa Anna was asleep; the soldiers were 
playing games. They had not time even to discharge 
their guns, and their losses show that the Texans were 
not generous victors. Some of the Mexican officers 
made gallant attempts to rally their men and make a 
stand, but in fifteen minutes the battle was over. Next 
day Santa Anna was captured in the marshes and with 
him Mexican control was lost. 

The Texas army demanded a bloody revenge; and 
if ever a commander was treacherous and shifty, a 
murderer of prisoners and the sick, well deserving 
hanging, it was Santa Anna. But Houston, though no 
saint himself, was not vindictive. He was shrewd 
enough, moreover, to see that Santa Anna living was 
worth more to his cause than a dozen such malefactors 
dead. He thriftily protected him from the fate the 
Texans would have inflicted, and bargained with him 
instead. 

Although Texas speedily applied for admission to 
the United States, years passed before it was attained. 
Jackson, who had tried to purchase a portion of Mexi- 
can territory, would have nothing to do with this proj- 
ect of annexation because of its obvious bearing on 
slavery. Van Buren adopted the same official attitude. 
Southern and democratic newspapers meanwhile were 
deluged with articles about Texas and its resources and 
general attractions, and Congress became the target for 
petitions for and against annexation, John Quincy 
Adams, as might be expected, leading the stubborn fight 
against it in the House. He occupied the morning hour 



A ROLLICKING CAMPAIGN 355 

day after day in a never-ending speech which kept it 
from coming to a vote in the sessions that ended with 
Van Buren's term on the 4th of March, 1841. 

Thus the question descended to Tyler by inheritance. 
The death of President Harrison and Tyler's break 
with the Whigs drove it for a time from the public 
mind; but in 1842 it came uppermost again. Texas 
renewed its request and the President would have ap- 
proved it gladly, had not Webster, who was still secre- 
tary of state, taken a firm, stand in opposition. It was 
known, too, that the Senate would not consent. Ty- 
ler's " corporal's guard " therefore set itself to work 
to manufacture public sentiment by means well known 
to politicians. Among other bits of strategy it man- 
aged to get a letter from Ex-President Jackson express- 
ing his own private views in favor of acquiring Texas ; 
this it laid aside to be published with a changed date 
when the proper time should come. Tyler meanwhile 
arranged a treaty of annexation, which the Senate de- 
feated. 

The question was not allowed to die and the cam- 
paign of 1844 was fought squarely on this issue. The 
Democrats nominated James K. Polk and conducted 
the canvass to the cry " The Northwest and the South- 
west," which meant that not only Texas but Oregon 
must be added to the Union. Clay was once again 
the Whig candidate and once again unsuccessful, 
though he attempted to please both sides by first oppos- 
ing annexation and later intimating that personally he 
did not object to it. The Democrats won and Tyler, 
feeling that his activity in the matter deserved recog- 
nition, urged Congress to annex the new State while 
he was still President. On March i, 1845, three days 
before the end of his term, a joint resolution annexing 
Texas to the United States passed both houses, and he 



356 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

laid down his official cares feeling that although he 
had become President by chance and had been dis- 
trusted by all, he had succeeded in carrying out the 
desire of his heart and thereby added greatly to the 
future strength and power of the South. 



CHAPTER XVII 
America's war of conquest 

THAT rallying cry of the Polk campaign, " The 
Northwest and the Southwest," was fashioned 
to cover a multitude of national longings. It 
held within itself not only the vigorous young Ameri- 
can instinct to press forward and possess every- 
thing in sight, but the necessities of slavery, the dis- 
quieting fiction of foreign invasion, and the wish of 
many good and pious people to see the conversion of 
the Indians. 

From the first, something in the air of our western 
horizons has magnified national acquisitiveness. The 
Northwest Territory seemed vast to the makers of 
the Constitution. Then Louisiana dawned upon their 
vision. Louisiana appeared so inexhaustible that 
Jefferson thought to settle the Indian problem for all 
time by establishing the tribes on reservations in its 
limitless extent. Yet scarcely had Louisiana passed 
under our control before we began looking westward 
again and coveting what lay between us and the Pacific. 
There was Oregon; we were conscious too of a spot 
called California; but nearer at hand was this matter 
of Texas. 

Looking back, it seems inevitable that Texas should 
have become part of the Union. Our own pioneers 
had redeemed it from the wilderness and our whole 
people recognized kinship with them, both in the valor 
with which they defended the Alamo and the shrewd- 

357 



358 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ness with which they kept Santa Anna as hostage 
after the battle of San Jacinto, When they asked as 
an independent State to be taken into the family of 
the Union, sentiment, cupidity, and blood all argued 
for them. 

" There are certain temptations that no government 
yet instituted has been able to resist," the biogra- 
phers of Lincoln wrote. " When an object is ardently 
desired by the majority, when it is practicable, when it 
is expedient for the material welfare of the country, 
and when the cost will fall upon other people, it may be 
taken for granted that . . . the partizans of the project 
will never lack means of defending its morality." 

President Polk took up the scheme of annexation 
with as much enthusiasm as Tyler had shown, and 
despatched a messenger to Texas. A convention of 
Texans was called for the 4th of July, when the pro- 
posal was accepted and ratified ; and in the closing 
days of 1845 Texas was formally admitted as one of 
the United States. 

President Polk's annual message to Congress called 
it a bloodless revolution ; but it is doubtful if the most 
optimistic believed that this was to be. Mexico recog- 
nized Texan independence only during the brief time 
that Santa Anna remained in Houston's power, a pris- 
oner of war. The Bustamante administration speedily 
repudiated his treaty, and war had been fitfully waged 
against Texas ever since. The Mexican government 
had served notice that it did not propose to submit 
to " an aggression unprecedented in the annals of the 
world," and even were it minded to submit now that 
annexation had formally taken place, the amount of 
territory involved would still give ample cause for 
quarrel. 

Santa Anna had agreed to whatever limits Texas 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 359 

chose to claim. The joint resolution admitting Texas 
left the matter open to " adjustment," but from the mo- 
ment Congress agreed to annexation our Government 
assumed that everything east of the Rio Grande be- 
longed of right to Texas, though in fact Texan terri- 
tory was settled only as far v^est as the Nueces River. 
The area between, only a few miles wide in some parts 
and several hundred miles wide in others, and extend- 
ing from the coast northward to the vicinity of Denver, 
was a piece of ground as irregular in shape as a gerry- 
mandered congressional district and as large as the 
whole of New England. 

The Whigs, in Congress and out, and the North 
generally had opposed annexation. Anti-slavery men 
pierced the haze of special pleading with which its 
advocates strove to surround it, and dwelt on the fact 
that first and last and fundamentally it was an effort to 
enlarge slave territory. Clay's unwise attempt to tem- 
porize with this instinct of his party cost him the Presi- 
dency, though his letter, admitting that he had no 
personal objection to the admission of Texas, in case 
certain quite impossible conditions could be fulfilled, 
seemed, on the face of it, likely to anger the friends 
rather than the enemies of slavery. Lowell denounced 
annexation in the Biglow Papers with a humor and sar- 
casm that outlived the issue and became literature ; and 
in Congress that master of dramatic speech, Corwin 
of Ohio, answered Cass's frank statement, " We want 
room," with his vehement, " If I were a Mexican I 
would ask, ' Have you not room in your own country to 
bury your dead? If you come to mine we will greet 
you with bloody hands and welcome you to hospitable 
graves.' " 

The Democrats and the South were a unit on the 
necessity of having Texas, even at the cost of war; 



36o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

but the widespread opposition made them wary and 
alive to the wisdom of beginning the war in a manner 
that would dispel, not increase, the strong feeling 
against it. Mexico must be made to seem the aggres- 
sor, and the war must be short. It would be best to 
end the matter by purchase. It was very awkward 
imder the circumstances that the only generals in the 
army available for supreme command belonged to the 
Whig party. Military success might tend to their 
glory instead of to the credit of the administration, 
while blame for failure would inevitably fall on the 
party responsible for war. However, the administra- 
tion must take what came. 

General Zachary Taylor and a considerable part of 
the small United States army was ordered to Corpus 
Christi on the border, in the summer of 1845, ^^ the 
hope that fighting might come about through mere 
proximity without orders from Washington. General 
Taylor knew perfectly what was expected of him but 
took a grim pleasure in thwarting the administration 
by delaying the event as long as possible. Aware that 
it must come in the end, however, he turned the season 
of waiting to good account in drill and organization. 

The Mexicans, on their part, were more inclined to 
catch wild horses and sell them to the Americans than 
to give them a shower of bullets ; and Taylor's young 
officers, in the intervals of his vigorous drilling, bought 
the wild ponies driven in by their future enemies, 
attended their dances, and made night melodious with 
sentimental song. Burns's " Green grow the Rashes 
O " sounded so often in camp that the brown men across 
the line assumed it to have a national significance and 
dubbed the blue-clad soldiers Gringos, a word that 
saved three syllables over Americanos every time it 
was uttered. 



^/^mim,^^^ 



M \m 




HENRY CLAY 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 361 

In this friendly fashion the winter passed away. 
The administration lost patience. Since the Mexicans 
refused to show proper spirit they must be prompted 
in their duty, and in March, General Taylor was or- 
dered to advance to the Rio Grande. The interven- 
ing country was practically a desert, relieved only by 
a few pools of water scooped out by travelers, or 
trampled into shallow lakes by the feet of bufifalo and 
wild horses. The distance between these oases de- 
termined the length of a day's march. Taylor's army, 
winding across the arid land in a tnin blue line, looked 
very inadequate to conquer'a country; but nothing ap- 
peared for it to conquer. It reached the Rio Grande 
and set to work building a fort under the very guns 
of Matamoras on the opposite bank. 

Then the break desired by the administration came; 
for the Mexicans tilled fields to the east of the river. 
Their cavalry, circling round parties of Americans that 
ventured too far from camp, killed several men and 
made prisoners of two companies of dragoons. Polk, 
in a special message, announced that " the cup of for- 
bearance has been exhausted." Congress declared 
war, and Taylor's army, crossing the Rio Grande, 
passed on to more serious work. 

The opening of hostilities placed the Whigs in Con- 
gress in an embarrassing position : it was difficult to 
denounce a war and at the same time support the army 
and rejoice in the victories of a Whig general. Draw- 
ing a sharp line between voting that it was a righteous 
war as the Democrats wished them to do, and voting 
supplies for soldiers who were not responsible for its 
commencement but were obeying orders and fighting 
battles, they sustained every measure to supply and en- 
courage the troops in the field. But when the Presi- 
dent asked Congress for a sum of money, at first two 



362 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

million dollars and later three, to be used in negotiations 
for peace, — which meant purchase of territory, that be- 
ing the one object of the war, — the Whigs and a few 
anti-slavery Democrats united in fastening on the ap- 
propriation the Wilmot Proviso that slavery should 
never exist in territory acquired from Mexico. They 
voted for this whenever they could do so without en- 
dangering the welfare of the army. Lincoln, whose 
congressional experience came at this time, often said 
that he voted forty times for the Wilmot Proviso dur- 
ing his single term in Congress. 

General Taylor's campaign, from his opening en- 
gagements at Palo Alto and Resaca on May 8 and 9, 
1846, to the taking of Monterey on September 24, 
was confined to the northern part of Mexico. He was 
in no haste to confide to Washington what he meant 
to do, and left the question of the Secretary of War 
unanswered for a month. Then in answer to a second 
anxious letter he replied that he could not feed his 
army in central Mexico if supplies had to be brought 
all the way from the Rio Grande; that towns on the 
seacoast could not be held because of the yellow fever; 
and that therefore he should not attempt to attack the 
City of Mexico but only to cut off the northern Mexi- 
can provinces. 

This did not sound specially dramatic; but the de- 
tails of his marching and fighting were rather too 
satisfactory to please an administration bent on only 
enough military success to accomplish its purpose and 
not enough to give the General a popularity that might 
prove inconvenient in the next Presidential campaign. 

Taylor paid little attention to politics, but went on 
with his fighting. The weapons on both sides were 
primitive. His small army carried flint-lock muskets, 
while the Mexican cavalry was armed in part with 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 363 

lances and spears, and their cannon were as much out 
of date as those used by Cortez in the original con- 
quest of Mexico. In the opening battle of Palo Alto, 
which was mainly an artillery duel, Taylor's batteries 
were drawn into place by ox teams and the solid shot 
from the antiquated Mexican guns struck the ground 
and bounded along so slowly that the Americans, see- 
ing them coming, were sometimes able to open ranks 
and let them pass harmlessly through. 

Compared with this leisurely engagement Resaca 
was a whirlwind fight, every man for himself, ending 
in a rout of the Mexicans that drove them through 
their own camp where cooks were preparing the meal 
to be eaten after the Gringos were disposed of, on into 
the waters of the Rio Grande. A certain young Lieu- 
tenant Grant was one of the participants. In an auto- 
biography dedicated thirty-nine years later " To the 
American Soldier and Sailor " he made quiet fun of 
his part in this battle, saying it would have ended 
quite as well if he had not been there. Its numbers 
were so small that it would hardly have merited the 
name of battle in the Civil War; but the standard 
of valor was not low on a field where the commanding 
general, urged not to expose himself, answered, " Let 
us ride a little forward where the balls will fall behind 
us." That he was pleased with the conduct of his 
troops may be inferred, for after the fight was over he 
looked with frowning tenderness on them and gave 
the accolade in four words, " Gentlemen, you are 
veterans." 

For purposes of its own the administration took 
care not to minimize these victories ; and in the news- 
paper accounts that came back to the army after many 
days, it had difficulty in recognizing its own exploits, 
so magnified were they. They were still more magni- 



364 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

fied in the hearts of those who had friends and kindred 
in the Httle army. Each mother knew it was her boy 
alone who had made the victory possible. Each 
father swelled with pride at the thought that his son 
had showed the stuff that was in him. Each com- 
munity felt honored that its townsmen had taken part. 
And there were hundreds of thousands who deplored 
the war but whose sympathies went out eagerly to 
their unknown countrymen fighting on foreign soil. 

These two small but complete successes at the be- 
ginning of the war set the key for deeds and for ex- 
pectations. The list of victories rolled up as sea 
victories had rolled up in the War of 1812, with 
scarcely a break, and with much picturesqueness and 
novelty and stimulus to imagination in the stories that 
came back to the home people. 

When General Taylor had received enough of the 
50,000 volunteers authorized by Congress to warrant 
his advance toward Monterey, the largest town in 
northern Mexico, he started up the Rio Grande to 
Camargo, the farthest point to which men and sup- 
plies could be carried by boat. The first day's march 
demonstrated that northern men could not endure the 
heat of the Mexican sun at that season ; so thereafter 
they moved at night, keeping on till the dawn bright- 
ened into a glare that forced them to shelter until dark- 
ness came again. One experience with mule trains 
showed them also that there were not men or profanity 
enough under the Stars and Stripes to drive them. 
Fortunately the enemy was expert at the task, and 
friendly enough to perform it even while at war. 

Monterey with its population of 12,000 was en- 
circled by a string of forts. It had street defenses in 
addition that made every street an avenue of death ; 
and each flat roofed house with its parapet was a 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 365 

fortress in itself. The town was defended by 10,000 
Mexicans. It required three days of sharp and pic- 
turesque fighting on the part of Taylor's army of 7000 
to bring it to the point of surrender. In this Lieuten- 
ant Grant and another officer named Jefferson Davis 
bore gallant part. 

In arranging terms of surrender General Taylor 
agreed not only that the Mexicans should march out 
with all the honors of war, but that the Americans 
would not advance beyond a certain line for eight 
weeks, or until ordered to do so from Washington. 
The administration professed to be much dissatisfied 
with this, and directed him to end the truce at once, 
which he did. 

Taylor was not giving the Democrats the short war 
they desired, while on the other hand his successes 
were making him very popular. The only available 
man to substitute for him was General Scott, who was 
likewise a Whig and was known to have Presidential 
aspirations of his own. Scott, however, had not ap- 
proved of Taylor's advance from the north, but 
favored landing an army at Vera Cruz and making 
straight for the City of Mexico along the route fol- 
lowed by Cortez 300 years before. Sending him to 
Mexico would appear to discredit Taylor; and after 
anxious conference the powers at Washington de- 
decided to take the risk, hoping that the political 
rivalry of the two men would result in the undoing of 
both in that field, yet afford enough military success 
for the Democrats to reap the glory. 

Awaiting his orders from Washington, Taylor 
marched and counter-marched to the help of detach- 
ments under Quitman at Victoria and of General 
Worth at Saltillo, where the latter was being threat- 
ened by the professional revolutionist Santa Anna. 



366 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

While engaged in these movements he learned with 
amazement of the new plans in Washington and that 
he was to be deprived of the larger half of his force, 
which was ordered to join General Scott. With the 
remainder and what recruits could be sent him, he was 
expected to hold a defensive line against overwhelming 
numbers. He protested, but the troops were marched 
away and he established himself in a camp of instruc- 
tion. 

Santa Anna meanwhile learned the same news 
through a captured letter, and conceived the idea of 
beating Taylor's diminished force in northern Mexico 
and then hurrying south to oppose Scott, though this 
involved, besides two great battles, a march of a thou- 
sand miles over barrens where the sun had cruel power 
by day and a deadly chill brooded at night, — condi- 
tions that would have rendered such a feat physically 
impossible for a northern army. 

Taylor fell back to a narrow defile in the mountains 
near the hacienda of Buena Vista, to await Santa 
Anna's coming. There on Washington's birthday the 
Mexican General sent him a flag of truce and the 
message that he was allowed an hour in which to make 
up his mind to surrender. Taylor answered in terms 
more forcible than polite that all eternity would not 
be long enough for that; and next morning at dawn 
the great battle of the war began. It ended in a 
victory that sent the brown men spinning southward 
and increased Taylor's popularity to an extent that 
landed him in the Presidential chair. 

Scott on his part had been loath to go to Mexico. 
It placed him, he said, between two fires : one at the 
front and the other in Washington. He felt that the 
administration was not friendly; but being assured of 
the President's confidence and promised everything he 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 367 

asked in the way of men and supplies, he set out. The 
promises were broken, as he feared they would be. 
He received only half the troops agreed upon and sup- 
plies in the same proportion ; while the higher officers 
detailed to accompany him were almost all men whom 
he regarded as personal or political enemies. But his 
fighting spirit was roused : he had been sent against his 
will and would show what he could do. " A little 
arrogance near the enemy when an officer is ready to 
suit the action to the word, may be pardoned by his 
countrymen," he wrote in his autobiography. For 
swaggering audacity the thing he did would have been 
criminal had not success crowned it. 

The land of Mexico rises from the sea in a series 
of giant steps. After the sea level, sickly with fevers 
and unsightly with cactus, come low hills that lead to 
an upland very like the plains of Texas. More hills 
rise, with beautiful almost tropical forests; and beyond 
these at an altitude of 7000 feet is the plain on which 
Mexico City lies, guarded by mountains white with 
snow. In his march of 260 miles from the seacoast 
to the capital city Scott's army therefore encountered 
the climate of every zone, a fact that added not a little 
to the difficulties of the undertaking and the wonder 
of his success. 

He first laid siege to Vera Cruz, the old walled town 
founded by Cortez. It surrendered on March 29, 
1847, ^ y^^"* after Taylor first appeared upon the Rio 
Grande. At that season it was guarded more effect- 
ively by the dreaded vomito than it could have been by 
any number of guns ; and knowing that his men could 
garrison it only at their peril, he started his army 
toward Jalapa on the road to Mexico City. 

That old sinner Santa Anna had one characteristic 
in common with Truth and his Satanic Majesty. 



368 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Crushed to earth he would rise again. Although so 
thoroughly beaten by Taylor a thousand miles to the 
north late in February, he was waiting by the middle 
of May with a fresh army, to oppose Scott at Cerro 
Gordo just where the mountains begin. This time 
it was the Mexicans who attacked. The winding road 
built by order of Cortez was raked at every turn by 
guns placed on the heights above. A direct attack 
would have been suicidal, and from the nature of the 
ground a flank movement seemed equally impossible. 
But there were young officers in Scott's army as there 
had been in Taylor's, whose names were to be written 
large in a greater war. These set to work to ac- 
complish the thing that seemed hopeless. A way 
was found where a road might be cut, though it looked 
too steep for mountain goats. At night soldiers 
dragged artillery along this secret way; lowered it 
by ropes over precipices, raised it again on the opposite 
side, and while the Mexicans were sleeping silently 
but gleefully placed it where it commanded their bat- 
teries of ancient bronze pieces. The surprise was 
complete. Three thousand prisoners, besides arms 
and stores fell into American hands. In the headlong 
pursuit Santa Anna's traveling carriage and mules, 
minus the one on which he escaped, were captured, 
and, tradition avers, his wooden leg also. These very 
personal belongings Scott returned, paroled the Mexi- 
can prisoners, and destroyed the munitions of war. 
His report, dated " fifty miles from Vera Cruz," re- 
marked with ostentatious carelessness that he found 
himself somewhat embarrassed by the many bronze 
cannon he had captured. 

The army pushed on next to Jalapa in its region 
of perpetual spring. Some of the officers thought 
they had never seen so beautiful a spot. Then they 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 369 

went to Perote on the upper plain, whose gates opened 
to the invaders without a shot. Santa Anna was re- 
treating toward the capital to make his last stand, and 
the people, left to themselves, showed their appreciation 
of the good government and good money the American 
army brought with it. They fought when ordered, 
but welcomed the Americans individually as paymas- 
ters and friends. 

At Jalapa, Scott faced the loss of half his troops, 
through no fault of his own, nor by battle nor by sick- 
ness. The term for which the volunteers had enlisted 
was not quite ended, but if he kept them until their 
time fully expired they would have to await transports 
at Vera Cruz at the season when the fever was most 
deadly. He had no reason to require this, since there 
was no battle in immediate prospect, and he must part 
with them in any event before the final struggle at 
Mexico City. He therefore dismissed them at once; 
an act of humanity that very likely came more easily 
to him than to a commander who had real faith in 
volunteers. 

The Government meanwhile, intent on ending the 
war by purchase rather than conquest, alike from 
motives of humanity and of politics, sent Nicholas P. 
Trist, the chief clerk of the Department of State, to 
Mexico with the draft of a treaty, and armed with 
power to suspend hostilities while negotiations were 
in progress. Scott's wrath at this proposal, that a 
general of the army defer to a mere clerk of the State 
Department on the military question of fighting or 
not fighting, can be imagined. A most venomous cor- 
respondence passed between them, but resulted in 
nothing because the Mexican government settled the 
matter by refusing to consider President Polk's ofYers. 
Trist lingered in Mexico and in time he and the Gen- 



370 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

eral were ashamed of their temper and became good 
friends. 

The campaign went on meantime and Puebla, next 
to the capital the finest city in Mexico, fell into Scott's 
hands without resistance. When his army had again 
reached the number of 10,000 through the arrival of 
new troops, he pushed on toward Mexico City, guided 
by two Americans who evaded Santa Anna's watch- 
fulness and came to show him the way. 

In this last stage of his journey Scott could no 
longer expect to provision his army from Vera Cruz, 
and had to rely on getting food in the country through 
which he marched. To invade a nation of seven or 
eight million people with an army of only 10,000 was 
in itself audacious, but to take it through mountain 
passes deliberately out of reach of his source of sup- 
plies and regardless of a line of retreat, was carrying 
things with a high hand. The Duke of Wellington, 
who had a slight personal acquaintance with the gal- 
lant American soldier and had followed the campaign 
with interest, and up to this point with admiration, 
now remarked to a mutual friend that Scott was 
" lost." He had been carried away by success. He 
had placed himself where he could neither take the city 
nor fall back upon his base. 

Some of the loftiest mountains of the continent still 
lay ahead of the Americans. Rio Frio, the pass over 
which Scott led his army, is 11,000 feet above sea 
level. It could easily have been defended, but Santa 
Anna, having had two disastrous experiences of bat- 
tles in mountain defiles, chose to make his stand in 
the capital itself. Unopposed Scott's army reached 
the summit and looked down upon the city, lying as 
Mexican cities so often lie, in a plain surrounded by 
hills. The town itself was picturesque, with belfries 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 371 

and many towers, and fields green as emerald from 
recent rains, pressed close about it. To the south and 
east three lakes sparkled in the sun ; farther away were 
the encircling mountains, Popocatepetl dominating 
them all, as it lifted its huge bulk into the sky. It 
was a wonderful sight, a fitting climax to the march 
up from the sea through all the varied zones of climate 
and vegetation, from tropic forests with their strange 
birds and gaudy flowers to these regions of snow. 

But the city in its fair setting was not yet taken. 
Santa Anna had three men to Scott's one, and he held 
not only the town but several villages in the plain, 
while a rocky hill directly across Scott's path bristled 
with defenses at base and top. The task before him 
required not only fighting but skill. Scott decided to 
skirt the lakes and attack from the south. Seeing 
this, Santa Anna shifted his men, and set the Indians 
of nearby hamlets to cutting ditches across the road 
and fortifying the church in the village of Cherubusco. 
The Americans, on their part, began hewing their way 
across a great lava field that lay between them and 
their goal. On the 20th of August the heights of 
Contreras were success fuly assaulted and next Cheru- 
busco in its level fields marked off by ditches, was 
taken. Many years afterward Grant pronounced 
Scott's strategy upon this day of battle to have been 
" perfect." Scott's report to the Secretary of War 
states that he could have entered the city that night 
had he not been assured " by intelligent neutrals and 
some Americans " that it was best to make haste 
slowly, " lest by wantonly driving away the govern- 
ment and others dishonored, we might scatter the ele- 
ments of peace, excite a spirit of national desperation, 
and thus indefinitely postpone the hope of accommoda- 
tion. Deeply impressed with this danger, and remem- 



372 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

bering our mission to conquer a peace, the army very 
cheerfully sacrificed to patriotism . . . the eclat that 
would have followed an entrance sword in hand, into a 
great capital." Elsewhere we gather that there were 
other reasons. The loss of life would have been great 
and pillage was almost sure to follow. 

The army halted, therefore, and next morning when 
about to take up assaulting positions that would have 
justified demanding a surrender, Scott received pro- 
posals for a truce to discuss terms, which he accepted. 
Mr. Trist of the State Department being still at hand, 
the outline of the treaty he had brought from Wash- 
ington was submitted to the Mexican cabinet, which 
on its side proposed terms of its own, entirely un- 
satisfactory to the Americans. Both were settling 
down to a comfortable, time-consuming interchange 
of demands when Scott discovered that the Mexicans 
were secretly strengthening their defenses, and imme- 
diately declared the armistice at an end. 

On the 8th of September he took Molino del Rey, a 
one-story stone building surrounded by a wall. It 
had once been a powder mill, but now stored grain, 
and with its flat roof and parapet of sandbags had 
been turned into a formidable fortress. For his good 
work there Grant received that most coveted military 
honor, a brevet for gallant and meritorious conduct in 
battle. 

On the 13th the rock of Chapultepec, rising one 
hundred and fifty feet from the plain, frowning with 
batteries, defended at its base with earthworks and 
crowned by a castle and military school, was carried 
in an assault where scaling ladders and personal dar- 
ing played parts as conspicuous as in any conflict of 
antiquity. Chapultepec ended the fighting of the war. 
That night Scott's troops cut their way through soft 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 373 

adobe walls of houses outside the town toward the 
city gates. But next morning there was no need for 
secrecy, or indeed for farther advance, for Santa Anna 
and his army had fled to Guadeloupe Hidalgo. When 
our army entered the city " under a brilliant sun " 
it was with an aspect so gay and martial that the Mexi- 
cans, crowding windows and parapets of the flat 
roofed houses, cheered their conquerors. General 
Scott raised his flag in the plaza and from his head- 
quarters in the palace took charge of the government 
of the city. The troops had yet to remain in Mexico 
several months while the treaty of peace was discussed 
and signed and sent home for approval. 

Twenty thousand new muskets of British manu- 
facture that Scott found stored in the citadel were con- 
verted into shoes for his horses and mules; and part 
of the moneys that came into his hands in various 
Mexican cities was used when the war was over to 
establish the home for old soldiers near Washington. 

Scott asserts that his reign was so beneficent that 
the Mexicans " felt and acknowledged the happy 
change," and that when it was known that a treaty of 
peace had been signed, political overtures were made to 
him by certain leaders suggesting that since the Ameri- 
can army would soon be reduced to a peace footing 
he could easily get together 15,000 selected American 
officers and men, add to it an equal force of Mexicans, 
and declare himself dictator for a term of four or six 
years, " to give time to politicians and agitators to 
recover pacific habits and learn to govern themselves." 
The final aim would be to annex all Mexico to the 
United States. Scott declined the scheme, though he 
found it, he said, " highly seductive both as to power 
and fortune." 

The Mexican province of California, meanwhile, had 



374 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

by a combination of accident and daring, come into the 
hands of the United State almost before the war began. 
Besides Indians, its inhabitants consisted of a few thou- 
sand Mexicans and a few hundred " foreigners," Eng- 
Hsh, French, and Americans, jealous among themselves 
but inclined on occasion to make common cause against 
their half-Spanish, half-Indian hosts. Like most of 
Mexico it was ill governed and not over loyal to its own 
authorities. Although the number of foreigners was 
small, the English among them were influential because 
of their connection with the fur interests of Canada. 
American distrust of this important monopoly in the 
Northwest, and the fear that in the event of war 
Mexico would favor England and give California to 
her in preference to losing it to the United States, 
prompted President Polk and his secretary of state, 
Buchanan, to do everything in their power to avert 
such a disaster. 

In 1845 word was sent to Commodore Sloat, com- 
manding the United States squadron on the Pacific 
coast, to guard against everything that might be deemed 
aggression, but to protect the persons and property of 
Americans, and in case he should learn that war was 
actually declared to take Yerba Buena and whatever 
other ports he could. Yerba Buena was the village 
of about 200 inhabitants that was even then beginning 
to be known as San Francisco. Instructions even more 
specific were sent to the American consul at Monterey, 
then a town of about 1000 inhabitants. He was 
warned that the people of California might at any mo- 
ment revolt and that the United States would strongly 
object to California becoming a French or an English 
colony. He was to use all proper means to " inspire 
them with a jealousy of European dominion," to show 
sympathy in case they asserted their independence, and 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 375 

if they manifested a desire to link their fortunes with 
the United States he was to assure them they would be 
" received as brethren whenever this can be done with- 
out affording Mexico just cause of complaint." In 
short, he was to let no chance escape to lead California 
gently but firmly in the way she should go. Most op- 
portunely also Captain John C. Fremont, whose bril- 
liant explorations had already earned him the title of 
the Pathfinder, started with government sanction on his 
third expedition west. He was as ambitious as he was 
young, and his previous record gave promise that he 
would welcome rather than avoid responsibility if it 
came his way. He made explorations in the neighbor- 
hood of the Great Salt Lake, then, traversing Nevada, 
his men entered California in two different bands. 

On the outbreak of war Colonel Kearney was sent 
in command of a force gathered at Fort Leavenworth 
into New Mexico to capture Santa Fe and proceed to 
Upper California. Since he might need more men 
than he had with him, he was authorized to muster into 
his force such Mormons as chose to enlist, provided 
they did not number more than one-third of his entire 
party. It was reported that 500 actually joined him. 
Following orders he took Santa Fe, and when eleven 
days on his way to California, met that famous scout 
Kit Carson traveling toward Washington with mail 
and despatches from Fremont and the naval com- 
mander. From Carson, Kearney learned the amazing 
news that California was already conquered, that the 
American flag was floating at all important points, and 
that Fremont was governor. This was true in sub- 
stance, though somewhat premature. Fremont and a 
party of fifteen men had reached California, and while 
waiting to be joined by the rest of his force he went 
to call upon the consul at Monterey. This visit 



Zyd OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

brought a prompt letter from the local Mexican offi- 
cial Castro to the consul, asking why United States 
troops had entered California and what their leader 
was doing in Monterey. Fremont answered that his 
was a party of hired men, not soldiers, that he was en- 
gaged in surveying a route to Oregon, and had come to 
Monterey to buy supplies. This reply quieted but did 
not convince the Mexican authorities, who kept a sharp 
watch upon his movements, and when his actions 
seemed to belie his words, ordered him out of the de- 
partment. He fortified himself instead and raised the 
Stars and Stripes. The consul, much alarmed, sent 
a call for help to the navy, in response to which the 
sloop of war Portsmouth appeared of? Monterey. 

Not waiting to be attacked, Fremont moved slowly 
northward and had just crossed the Oregon border 
when, either on account of deep snows or Indian hostil- 
ity, or because of news received from the Americans 
in California, he turned south again. Alarming 
rumors were current, to the effect that Castro had or- 
dered all Americans who had not been naturalized to 
leave the province, and that the Indians were being 
roused to destroy the crops. This was not true, but 
circumstantial evidence made it appear plausible. The 
American inhabitants of Sonoma on the north side of 
San Francisco Bay announced a republic and raised 
their new flag, made of a piece of white cotton and a 
strip of red flannel, and painted with a red star and 
the white bear they adopted as their emblem because 
of its fighting qualities. Meantime a band of horses 
destined for Castro and the Mexican officials of 
Sonoma had been captured by some of the men who 
came to tell Fremont of the Mexican and Indian ag- 
gression. Castro sent a force to retake Sonoma, and 
the Bear Flag men called on Fremont, who entered the 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 377 

town, took command, and promptly set off to attack 
Castro. It was at this point that Fremont first learned 
of the declaration of war between Mexico and the 
United States. The only difference it made in his 
plans was that at sunrise the next morning the flag 
of the United States replaced the white and red flag 
with the Bear. 

Commodore Sloat was too old and too cautious to 
enjoy the situation. He had acted with the utmost 
care to avoid aggression, but hearing that war had 
really come and what Fremont had been doing, he sent 
the trim old Portsmouth to San Francisco Bay and 
himself raised the United States flag over Monterey, 
summoning Fremont to join him with a hundred men. 
When the two met, the prudent old commander was hor- 
rified to learn that the harebrained young one had been 
proceeding on his own initiative, without orders from 
Washington. He remembered only too well how for 
a few brief hours in 1842 the American flag had floated 
over Monterey through excess of zeal on the part of 
an American naval officer, who paid dearly for the in- 
discretion. Much distressed Sloat turned over his 
command to Commodore Stockton and set out for 
home. As it happened, orders relieving him were even 
then on the way. Stockton had no such scruples and 
cooperated vigorously with Fremont in finishing the 
conquest already more than half complete. 

" We simply marched all over California from 
Sonoma to San Diego, and raised the American flag 
without opposition or protest," said one of the conquer- 
ing handful. " We tried to find an enemy, but we 
could not." This was hyperbole. There was a little 
fighting, particularly in the south, and a counter revolu- 
tion at San Diego, but not enough to invalidate the 
statement. 



378 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

California had become ours without orders, through 
a series of silent understandings and happy misunder- 
standings, but it would have been ours in any event, 
since the treaty signed at Guadaloupe Hidalgo on 
February 2, 1848, included it in the tract that passed 
from the possession of Mexico into our own. The 
territory thus ceded covered an area equal to seventeen 
States the size of New York, embracing Texas, for 
which we had gone to war, New Mexico, and Cali- 
fornia, and stretched from the Pacific coast eastward 
to take in western Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. The 
Senate manifested some inclination to reject the treaty 
as not securing us enough land, but it was finally rati- 
fied. 

First and last, this peaceful republic of ours has 
seen a good deal of fighting. Of all the wars in which 
the country has engaged this one, coming in the hey- 
day of its youth, is the hardest to justify and the least 
dreadful to remember. It seemed more like a gay and 
romantic excursion than like deadly earnest. There 
was plenty of physical exertion in it and no lack of 
danger, but little of war's cruelty or revolting horror. 
Even the Mexican country over which our army 
marched, with its glamour of ancient history and the 
wonders of its scenery, added to the spectacular un- 
reality and charm of this digression from the path of 
virtue; while the half-naked brown men, who fought 
us by day with their antiquated weapons, were half 
friendly and welcomed the Gringos to their dances at 
night in a fashion that made it all seem not so much 
like real war as a successful and brilliant make believe. 

But it had consequences much more serious than 
make believe. It hastened the Civil War and it trained 
Union and Confederate officers for that strife. " My 
experience in the Mexican War," wrote General Grant, 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 379 

" was of great advantage to me afterwards. Besides 
the practical lessons it taught, the war brought nearly 
all of the officers of the regular army together so as to 
make them personally acquainted. It also brought 
them in contact with volunteers, many of whom served 
in the war of the rebellion afterwards." The names of 
the officers in the campaigns under General Taylor and 
General Scott, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Sher- 
man, Grant, Thomas, Reynolds, Bragg, and a score of 
others show what kind of young men these were who 
marched and fought and danced through Mexico, and 
their after history proves how well they learned in this 
gay pilgrimage lessons they turned to serious account 
in a war that was no holiday parade. 

General Scott had reason to be well satisfied with 
his work. He had made a wonderful march and 
captured a great territory with a loss of very few men. 
He had the right to expect the approval of his country- 
men. He had already been once a Presidential can- 
didate and he hoped national approval might take this 
form most coveted by him. This ambition had to 
go down before popular enthusiasm for General Tay- 
lor, who by the irony of Fate cared far less for it. 
General Scott intimates in his memoirs that he himself 
would have been more popular if his victories had been 
less bloodless. " That won't do ; Taylor always loses 
thousands ; he 's the man for my money ! " a man in a 
New Orleans crowd had been heard to shout when 
told that Vera Cruz had been taken with a loss of less 
than a hundred. Taylor did not lose men by the thou- 
sand or he would have had no army left. There were 
reasons more plausible to account for the furor. He 
was much more a typical American than Scott, as 
simple in manner and as shrewd and honest as he was 
successful in battle. And he was brave all through. 



38o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

morally as well as with the kind of rare physical cour- 
age that made a hail of bullets as powerless to affect 
his nerves as a summer shower. He cared greatly for 
the essentials of his profession and absolutely nothing 
for its trappings. He was called affectionately Old 
Rough and Ready by his soldiers and the thousands 
who shouted themselves hoarse over his victories. 
The name by which General Scott was known in pri- 
vate conversation was Old Fuss and Feathers. Pos- 
sibly that explains why Buena Vista, fought with de- 
pleted forces by an apparently discredited general, took 
firmer hold on popular imagination than the capture 
of the halls of the Montezumas, or Cerro Gordo with 
its almost superhuman achievements in mountain scal- 
ing and its humorous incident of the wooden leg. 

Besides, Buena Vista happened long before Cerro 
Gordo, and from the moment news of it reached the 
States papers began their work of propaganda. By 
the time Scott's victory was reported, Taylor's candi- 
dacy was a well-established fact. He was nominated 
in a hundred different places and in a hundred differ- 
ent ways before the party convention met and ratified 
the choice. Personally he showed no enthusiasm or 
even great interest. He was a passive candidate. He 
would not cross " yon ferry " to influence the result, 
he told a friend, but hinted that his wife had stronger 
preferences, — that for months she had been praying 
nightly that Henry Clay might be the choice of the 
party. If the people wanted him he was at their serv- 
ice, the General said, but he refused to pose as a parti- 
zan. He called himself a Whig but not an ultra Whig, 
and seemed not to care how his attitude on slavery 
affected his chances. He was from Kentucky. A 
planter who wrote to him to find out his views, saying 
that by a lifetime of hard work he had accumulated a 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 381 

plantation and a hundred slaves, received the follow- 
ing answer: " Sir: I too have worked faithfully these 
many years, and the net product remaining to me is 
a plantation with three hundred Negroes. Yours 
truly." 

This appeared practical and satisfactory to the South, 
and Taylor was elected by a handsome majority over 
Cass, the Democratic candidate. 

The military experiences of Wm. Henry Harrison, 
the other Whig general who had been transformed 
into a President by popular enthusiasm, had been 
brief, almost casual episodes in his long and honorable 
and not very distinguished civil career. With Taylor 
it was just the reverse. He is probably the only one 
of our twenty-seven presidents who never even voted. 
He had entered the army before reaching the age of 
twenty-one. When R. C. Winthrop, speaker of the 
House of Representatives, called upon him to explain 
the details of the inauguration ceremonies, the Presi- 
dent-elect informed him that he had only once been in 
the Senate chamber and then as a mere spectator in the 
gallery. 

Winthrop was much impressed by General Taylor's 
earnestness and simplicity. The unaffected, brave old 
general made a better President than was to be ex- 
pected of a man utterly ignorant of politics and of 
civil life. Webster had declared the nomination " not 
fit to be made," yet in the short year that remained to 
him of life he showed himself well able to cope with 
his new task. General Scott, whose opinion under the 
circumstances was not likely to be too favorable, 
called him prejudiced and narrow in certain unim- 
portant ways. He hated a coxcomb and had small pa- 
tience with men who made a parade of learning. " He 
would not touch them with a pair of tongs," he said. 



382 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

" Few men," wrote General Scott, " have ever had 
a more comfortable labor-saving contempt for learning 
of every kind. Yet this old soldier and neophyte 
statesman had the true basis of a great character : — 
pure, uncorrupted morals combined with indomitable 
courage. Kind hearted, sincere and hospitable in a 
plain way, he had no vice but prejudice, many friends, 
and left behind him not an enemy in the world." 

Daniel Webster had been offered the Vice-Presi- 
dency and refused it, with what feelings can be divined. 
Had he pocketed his pride and accepted the second 
place, he would have gained the goal of his ambition. 
On July 4, 1850, the President attended the laying of 
the cornerstone of the Washington Monument. He 
complained of the effect of the sun and on his return 
to the White House Imprudently drank cold water and 
ate fruit, and in a hour's time became very ill. Fred- 
rika Bremer, who had a strong antipathy to our oysters, 
was sure he must have been made ill by oyster patty. 
She was in the Senate chamber when Webster an- 
nounced the President's approaching death. A speaker 
was prosing away on the slavery question. Webster 
approached and stood beside him for a moment. A 
thrill as from an electric shock seemed to pass through 
the assembly. People entered hurriedly, and Webster 
with a deprecatory gesture indicated that he must in- 
terrupt on account of important business. " The ora- 
tor bowed and was silent. A stillness as of death 
reigned in the House and all eyes were fixed upon 
Webster, who himself stood silent for a few seconds 
as if to prepare the assembly for tidings of serious im- 
port. He then spoke slowly and with that deep and 
impressive voice which is peculiar to him : * I have a 
sorrowful message to deliver to the Senate. A great 
misfortune threatens the nation. The President of 



AMERICA'S WAR OF CONQUEST 383 

the United States, General Taylor, is dying, and prob- 
ably may not survive the day ! ' Again was that silent 
electrical shock perceptible. I saw many persons turn 
pale, and I felt myself grow pale also from the un- 
expected announcement and from seeing the effect 
which it had produced. One senator bowed his head 
upon his hands as if he heard the thunder of judg- 
ment." Then after the first moment of emotion had 
passed, some one moved that the Senate adjourn. 

On July 9 the old warrior died, and Millard Fill- 
more who had been elected Vice President, succeeded 
to the higher office. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 

OUR gains and desires in western territory did 
not stop with California and Texas. The 
idea of possessing Russian America was first 
broached in Polk's administration, to be consummated 
twenty years later. In 1853 the Gadsden purchase of 
a tract of land about the size of Pennsylvania was 
made to round out our boundaries in Arizona and 
New Mexico; and before the war with Mexico was 
well started, Oregon, so long a bone of contention be- 
tween the United States and Great Britain, came un- 
der the American flag. 

English claims to Oregon were based on the voyage 
of Sir Francis Drake in 1579 and subsequent visits of 
Vancouver and Captain Cook. The United States 
pointed to the actual discovery of the Columbia River 
by Captain Gray in 1792, to the Louisiana purchase, 
the explorations of Lewis and Clark, and the treaty 
of 18 19 with Spain, whereby the United States ac- 
quired all the rights and claims north of latitude 42°. 
Each country contended for a different boundary, Eng- 
land demanding everything down to the Columbia 
River, the United States insisting on the line 54° 40', 
the limit set in an arrangement with Russia when that 
country withdrew its claims to certain rights farther 
south. 

Very likely the presence of the Russian Bear on 
384 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 385 

American soil rendered easier a compact made in 18 18 
between Britain and the United States for joint occu- 
pancy of the territory in dispute for a period of ten 
years, without prejudice to the claims of either. This 
compact had been renewed and was still in force, but 
could be terminated by either party on twelve months' 
notice. 

England valued the Oregon country solely for its 
furs, and therefore discouraged settlement. The re- 
ports of Lewis and Clark turned the thoughts of 
American fur traders in the same direction, and the 
Missouri Fur Company was speedily organized at St. 
Louis and established posts so far beyond the Rockies 
that they had to be abandoned, because of Indian hos- 
tility and the impossibility of keeping them stocked 
with food. About the time they were given up, how- 
ever, another American enterprise entered the field in 
the Pacific Fur Company. This was John Jacob 
Astor's princely scheme for establishing a chain of 
posts in the northwestern country, carrying the furs 
there collected to China, and bringing back from China 
to New York cargoes of tea and silk. As the small 
beginning of this world-embracing enterprise, the post 
of Astoria was established on the south bank of the 
Columbia River, a few miles from the sea, in 181 1. 
During the war with England it fell into British hands, 
largely through a successful bluff, and changed its 
name to Fort George, a fact unknown to the makers 
of the treaty of Ghent when those gentlemen were 
laying the foundation for the agreement that ended in 
joint occupancy. When joint occupation was actually 
begun, Astoria was quietly restored to the United 
States. 

The fur trade did not flourish in American hands 
as it did under British control, but adventurous spirits 



386 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

from the East began to go out to Oregon with a view 
to settling there. Our claims to the region were dis- 
cussed at intervals in Congress, as well as its value and 
the advisability of taking steps to secure it permanently 
by establishing a military post and giving it a terri- 
torial form of government. Few congressmen would 
admit that it had value except possibly as a penal 
colony, and they indulged in flights of mathematical 
rhetoric to prove how long it would take a delegate 
to travel from his constituents to his seat in the House 
of Representatives and back home again, and the stu- 
pendous amount of mileage he could collect by the 
way. Statesmen from the South who were glib with 
reasons for the annexation of Texas could see no 
reason whatever for this. According to them, " no 
gentleman of the most prolific mind " could conceive 
a time when we should really need Oregon to accommo- 
date our population or occupy our energies. Besides, 
was not the God-planted boundary of the Rockies there 
to mark our western limit? It would be madness to 
cross it. 

But the question would not be silenced by sarcasm 
or theology. An Oregon colonization society was 
formed in Boston as early as 1829. It came to noth- 
ing. Nor in any definite way did the journey east of 
the four Nez Perces in search of the Bible. Two of 
them died in Missouri, and another on his way home, 
and they did not get the book. But their unique quest 
fired public imagination and added missionary zeal to 
other impulses that were urging settlers toward Ore- 
gon. In 1834 the Methodist denomination sent Jason 
and Daniel Lee with a small company to live among 
them, and that same year the Presbyterians also sent 
out a party. In 1836 Marcus Whitman, a physician 
sent by the Presbyterian Board, with his young wife, 



$30,000 OR $30,000 A YEAR 387 

and H, H. Spaulding, lately graduated from Lane 
Theological Seminary and the girl he had just married, 
traveled with horses and cattle, blacksmith forge, 
plows, seed-grains, and clothing in a strange patriarchal 
bridal procession, to take up the work of physical and 
spiritual healing. These two plucky young brides 
were the first white women to make the long journey 
across the continent. The little party, especially Whit- 
man with his medical skill, served white and red men 
faithfully in their new home, and it was a bitter recom- 
pense that Dr. Whitman and his wife both fell victims 
to Indian rage after eleven years of devoted labor 
among them. 

Courtesy was the policy of the English traders 
toward white neighbors, even though they did not 
wish the country settled. Dr. McLaughlin, in charge 
of the Hudson Bay Company's affairs, was a kindly 
man as well as an able one, and he and the American 
missionaries lived on terms of hostile friendliness, 
each respecting the good qualities of the others and 
feeling a personal liking, but never losing the sense of 
national difference of interest. The posts of the fur 
traders and the missionary settlements were the only 
oases of white influence and comfort in a country 
where nature was on a scale of gigantic, austere beauty 
and Indian nature seemed low and disappointing in 
proportion. The tribes near the Columbia though so 
friendly at first soon ceased to show the same confi- 
dence and interest. Proselyting efforts of the mission- 
aries did not meet with large success. The Lees did 
better with agriculture than in sowing the seeds of 
faith, and gradually turned their attention to the wel- 
fare of incoming white settlers, Avhile the affairs of 
the Presbyterians went so badly that in 1842 the board 
decided to discontinue the two missions in which Whit- 



388 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

man was specially interested. He made a desperate 
winter journey east, tortured by cold and suffering 
hunger to the verge of starvation, and appeared in 
Boston in buckskin and furs to plead against this or- 
der. Then he went to Washington to advocate with 
equal earnestness a line of forts along the Oregon 
trail for the protection of emigrants now traveling in 
that direction in greatly increased numbers. In neither 
place did he receive warm encouragement, but his 
representations, added to those of Jason Lee, who had 
also visited the East, lecturing and urging a territorial 
form of government, had weight. Fremont's pictur- 
esqueness and popularity likewise aided to bring the 
region into general notice, for it was at this time that 
he returned from his first expedition to the South Pass 
and started on his second one, that carried him to the 
Pacific coast. 

The influx of settlers into the Oregon country in 
the summer of 1842 made some kind of organization 
necessary, and in the autumn English and French 
Canadians were asked to cooperate with the Amerir 
cans in forming a provisional government. Dr. Mc- 
Laughlin answered very properly that his loyalty was 
due first of all to England, while Father Blanchet, the 
leader of the French, thought a provisional govern- 
ment likely to bring more evil than benefit. The 
Americans therefore acted alone, and on the 4th of July, 
1843, adopted the law of Iowa, somewhat remodeled, 
as the First Organic Law of Oregon. Under this they 
elected a legislature, judge, and lesser officers as well 
as a treasurer and secretary, but no executive, holding 
their government to be merely a temporary makeshift 
until the United States should provide one for them in 
due form. The Hudson Bay Company's officials con- 
tinued to act as British magistrates and to send crimi- 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 389 

nals to Upper Canada for trial, so that in addition to 
the dual occupation, there was the anomaly of two dis- 
tinct forms of government, exercised at the same time 
in the same territory. 

Those interested in the West had been disappointed 
that the Webster-Ashburton Treaty failed to settle 
its boundary dispute as well as that of Maine. Presi- 
dent Tyler's message transmitting it to the Senate al- 
luded to Oregon, saying that the questions involved 
could not be settled in this treaty without delaying 
other more pressing matters, but that a settlement must 
speedily come or the peace of the two countries might 
be in danger. This paragraph, attributed to Webster, 
attracted wide notice in England as well as at home, 
and from that time the Oregon boundary became an 
important issue. The campaign cry of the summer of 
1844, " The Northwest and the Southwest," showed 
the trend of popular feeling. But the Southwest was 
by far the more important of the two in the eyes of 
Democrats. Anotlier of their slogans in that cam- 
paign " Fifty-four forty or fight," was effective rather 
than sincere ; for at the very moment that the Polk 
nominating convention was declaring our title to Ore- 
gon " unquestionable," Calhoun, the secretary of state, 
was hinting to Great Britain a willingness to compro- 
mise on a boundary at the 49th parellel. It was not 
necessary for voters to know this, however, and the 
cry continued its work of winning votes. With its 
alliteration and its pugnacity it was well calculated to 
rouse enthusiasm, even if it had not gained unexpected 
force through the championship of that good old 
fighter, John Quincy Adams. He had been secretary 
of state when the agreement for joint occupancy was 
made, and had been President at the time it was re- 
newed. He might, therefore, be considered an au- 



390 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

thorlty, and he upheld our right to all the territory we 
claimed. 

But by the time public interest had overcome dis- 
tance, and Congress in February, 1846, voted to give 
the necessary notice and terminate joint occupation, 
the certainty of war with Mexico had brought about 
a state of things where the United States could not 
afford to quarrel with England. Either an aggres- 
sive Mexican policy or a vigorous prosecution of Ore- 
gon claims must go to the wall, and it required no gift 
of prophecy to tell which would be sacrificed. When 
the negotiations took place, 54° 40', or at least the 
threat to fight for it, was forgotten and the present line 
agreed upon. In 1826 England had scouted the idea 
of accepting the 49th parallel. In the opinion of men 
whose views are well worth recording, Calhoun and 
James G. Blaine among others, a season of patient wait- 
ing might have secured to the United States all she 
asked and more, — possibly all of British Columbia, 
through mere force of peaceful American invasion. 
The rush to California that began two years later 
would have been all in our favor; but that was yet 
undreamed of, and American settlers in the North- 
west clamored for American protection and American 
territorial government. 

There were fewer Americans in California at that 
time than in Oregon. Although " foreigners " in 
California formed only a very small percentage of the 
population, they were important in influence and energy, 
for, as one who had personal experience said, very 
few cowards nerved themselves to meet the real or 
imaginary dangers of a journey across the Rocky 
Mountains, and no indolent man could have done so, 
though he possessed the bravery of Caesar. About one 
third of the people were Mexicans of Spanish descent, 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 391 

shading from those of high class and intelHgence to 
others who by reason of habits and intermarriage 
were scarcely to be distinguished from the Indians 
who made up the great mass. The Mexican and 
Spanish elements gave the country a medieval quality 
totally lacking in the tall forests of Oregon. The 
priests of the Catholic missions, with their rich church 
buildings and far-reaching lands, and their absolute do- 
minion over Indians and devout Mexicans in matters 
both spiritual and temporal, exercised a power closely 
resembling vassalage; while the governing class of the 
days before American possession was an aristocracy 
that lived in a mixture of barbaric elegance and crude 
simplicity. Small wonder that they had wished to 
keep foreigners from entering and establishing them- 
selves in their archaic society. 

There was little for Americans to do but to chafe at 
Mexican ways and make money out of their shiftless- 
ness. In the autumn of 1843 there were only two saw 
mills in operation in the entire country, though an- 
other run by steam and a steam flour mill were con- 
templated by these same restless invaders. But it is 
easy to see that Oregon offered a ground more con- 
genial to the average American than the half-feudal 
conditions to be found in California. 

The usual time required for the journey to the 
Pacific coast was 120 days from Independence, on the 
western edge of Missouri, or from Council Blujffs, two 
great points of rendezvous where emigrants gathered 
to wait until a sufficient number arrived to make the 
journey together in safety. May was thought to be 
the best time for setting out, since that would bring 
them to their destination in September. If they de- 
layed their departure beyond the middle of May they 
might be overtaken by winter storms in the mountains. 



392 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

From these two points of departure travel diverged 
north and south. Those bound for Oregon or Upper 
CaHfornia crossed the Rocky Mountains over the 
South Pass and made their way to Salt Lake by the 
route taken by the Mormons, and so on to the coast; 
or they followed the Snake River up to the Columbia. 
Those going south took the old Santa Fe trail broken 
in 1803 when an American trading expedition made 
its way across the plains to invade the somnolence of 
New Mexico with salt and silk and the vanities of 
manufacture, in exchange for bullion and wild horses. 
From there by way of the Gila River they reached San 
Diego over the route Kit Carson followed when he 
rode east with despatches announcing the capture of 
California. Or bearing a little more to the north, they 
journeyed to Los Angeles over the Spanish Trail taken 
by Fremont in 1844 on his return journey east. The 
Santa Fe trail had been the earliest to see regular 
established communication; but most of its traffic 
ended in New Mexico. Along the California coast 
trade could be carried on more profitably by sea ; and 
there was little except trade to lure Americans thither. 
Only thirty American hunters were added to its popu- 
lation in the five years between 1830 and 1835. 

The oak and acorn simile is hackneyed and outworn, 
but nothing proves its truth like the history of Cali- 
fornia, where a single small yellow nugget changed 
this lazy remnant of the Spanish Middle Ages to the 
wild push and scramble of an Anglo-Saxon race for 
wealth. The finding of this bit of treasure happened 
almost at the moment of the signing of the treaty of 
Guadaloupe Hidalgo. It was as though Nature 
waited for the passing of Mexican indolence, and re- 
warded American thrift with her questionable gift of 
gold. 





>^^ 



HORACE GREELEY 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 393 

The discovery was made as casually as the great 
things in which Nature takes a hand usually happen. A 
man named James W. Marshall, engaged in building a 
sawmill near Sacramento, caught a glint of something 
shining in the mill race. He picked it up and showed 
it to a companion, and handed it, after the two had 
wondered what " that yellow stuff " could be, to 
the woman who did the camp cooking, with the request 
that she boil it in saleratus water. She was busy mak- 
ing soap and tossed it carelessly into the soap kettle, 
where it remained a day and a night and came out 
brighter for the boiling. Marshall then took it to 
Captain Sutter of Sutter's Fort on the Sacramento 
River, his partner in the mill enterprise, and behind 
closed doors with a cyclopedia and a pair of scales they 
endeavored to work out a problem with which they 
were totally unfamiliar. So far as their blundering 
guesses could go it was gold, but the idea seemed too 
wild for credence. Nothing much was said about it 
at the mill and the work of building went on, but the 
few men employed looked sharply at dirt they had 
carelessly walked over a hundred times, and were re- 
warded by finding occasional thin, scale-like particles 
of the same yellow substance. The Indians brought 
in similar pieces and turned them over to the lady of 
the soap kettle, she being the fountain head for food 
and supplies dear to the Indian heart. In about three 
weeks several ounces had been thus collected, when 
Marshall took the stuff to San Francisco to have it 
tested. On his return he and his partner bought a 
large tract of the land thereabout from the Indians 
for some beads and cotton handkerchiefs, — and the 
sawmill was never finished. 

A Georgia miner named Humphrey, who had been 
consulted in San Francisco because of his experience, 



394 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

went quite mad his friends thought. He tried to in- 
duce some of them to join him, but they refused and he 
had to go to the site of the find alone. What he saw 
there pleased him. He made a rocker and began the 
business of placer mining in California. The owners 
of the land so easily bought from the Indians required 
a third of all gold mined upon it and collected this 
tribute until the following autumn, when an enter- 
prising party from Oregon declined to " pay tithes " as 
they called it. 

By this time there were many miners and the area 
of their labors had greatly broadened. But the news 
was so unbelievable that at first it traveled slowly. It 
was more than three months after Marshall's discov- 
ery before the San Francisco newspapers announced 
that gold mining had become a regular California in- 
dustry. By the latter part of the year miners began 
to arrive from Oregon and the Sandwich Islands and 
Mexico. In September the first fabulous tales of gold- 
finding on the Pacific coast, that had been slowly filter- 
ing eastward to set towns and farming communities 
agape with wonder, reached New York. They were 
treated at first as American humor, — Munchausen 
romances of the first water. In October they attracted 
real attention. In November new reports were awaited 
with eagerness. By December the stories began to be 
believed: and when early in the new year some of the 
actual gold reached the Philadelphia mint and was 
pronounced genuine, excitement took possession of the 
whole country. 

It was like a call to battle and its answering enthusi- 
asm, save that for patriotic ardor and the red glamour 
of war were substituted the lure of exploration and 
mirage of wealth. All the young men hungering for 
adventure saw here the chance of their lives. The dis- 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 395 

satisfied found their lot the blacker for this golden 
vision ; and those who had met disappointment grasped 
at an opportunity to set themselves right with Fortune. 
Announcements, jesting or eager or desperate, that 
they meant to seek the new El Dorado, followed, and 
preparation, open or secret, went on for the journey. 
Then came the wrenching loose from old ties and the 
starting forth to a life of danger and immense odds. 
Newspapers printed lists of those about to leave and 
of companies being organized. Greeley's " Tribune " 
kept a standing headline, " The Golden Chronicle," 
on its front page and filled two columns of each 
issue with names and details, while each local sheet 
echoed with the news affecting its own circle of read- 
ers. The furor grew until every hamlet had given up 
at least one of its able-bodied men while towns sent 
them out by companies and even regiments. From 
fifty to one hundred thousand rushed to California that 
first summer, and the numbers increased for three or 
four years. Every family had a kinsman embarked 
in the venture ; and just as in the case of armies in the 
field, those who remained behind followed them in 
imagination and waited hungry for news through in- 
terminable intervals of silence. 

Whether they traveled by land or sea, it was a long 
and perilous journey, with small chance of sending 
back word to those at home. What these weeks and 
months of vivid emotional imagining did to awaken 
our people to the extent and possibilities of their coun- 
try, can never be measured. There had always been 
a frontier with its lure of the beyond; but it had been 
an indefinite beyond, bounded only on the near side 
and stretching far out into space. Now they were 
forced to contemplate the country as a whole, with its 
wide plains, its mountains, its perils, and its treasures. 



396 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Every line of writing about it, in books or in letters 
which found their precarious way back to old friends, 
every story of success or failure, every detail of physi- 
cal geography, every mocking casual hint of hardship 
or of fabulous wealth, was discussed and brooded over 
and prayed about in the homes they had left behind. 

If the adventurers chose to go by sea, they had the 
alternatives of a voyage six to ten months long around 
Cape Horn ; or thirteen days to Panama and a trip 
across that narrow and fever-infested bit of land, with 
a gambler's chance of finding a vessel at the other side 
on which to continue their journey. Every bit of 
merchandise they took with them, and often these 
seafarers put their available funds into something 
profitable for trading in the gold fields, had to be 
transported in small boats or on the backs of half- 
naked bearers up the Chagres River and through a 
jungle bewildering to northern senses in its medley of 
tropic sights and sounds and the wonder of malignantly 
luxurious vegetation. 

Cholera added terror to the uncertain length of their 
stay in Panama, for it might be weeks or even longer 
before the opportunity came to go on ; the vague sched- 
ule of the western coastwise ships being subject to sud- 
den and unexpected change through mutiny or a gust 
of gold fever that swept their sailors into miners and 
left the decks empty. It is said that Collis P. Hunt- 
ington was kept waiting three months, but with true 
mercantile genius made it a season of gain, tramping 
back and forth from the Atlantic to the Pacific twenty 
times, adding several thousands to his gains by vari- 
ous transactions. For those unblessed with business 
instinct it was a season of alarming encroachment upon 
their capital ; and it was apt to be a season of education 
for the waiting American, not only in money values, 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 397 

but in those frank details of living and dying which 
the Latin races take as a matter of course. From the 
piles of discarded and dishonored bones in the ceme- 
tery to the cock fighting and the deportment of the 
black-eyed seiioritas, the code was different to that 
in which they had been trained. When they finally 
took passage on an overcrowded and not altogether sea- 
worthy vessel, they were apt to be broader-minded if 
not better men. Travelers from the East continued 
to press in, with no way of relieving the pressure, until 
the town was dangerously congested and sickness came, 
and shortage of food was threatened. 

If the voyagers chose to cover the three thousand 
miles by land, there was the long journey to some 
frontier post where fitting out for the real expedition 
took place. Long before that the trip for Eastern 
men had assumed the proportions of an adventure. 
Typical jottings from Horace Greeley's diary show 
the gradual but inevitable fading out of civilization. 

" May 12, Chicago, — Chocolate and morning jour- 
nals last seen on the hotel breakfast table ; 23d, Leaven- 
worth, — Room bells and bathtubs make their final ap- 
pearance ; 24th, Topeka, — Beefsteaks and washbowls 
(other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto. 26th, 
Manhattan, — Potatoes and eggs last recognized. . . . 
Chairs ditto. 27th, Junction City, — Last visitation of 
a bootblack. . . . Beds bid us goodby; 28th, Pipe 
Creek, — Benches for seats at meals disappeared giving 
place to bags and boxes. . . . Our trust under Provi- 
dence, is in buoyant hearts and a rubber blanket." 

And when the frontier post was reached, the good 
weapons and the good advice that the voyager accumu- 
lated ! The calculations that took place about food and 
ammunition and clothing; the weight involved and 
what was really needed for the journey! A reliable 



398 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

gun was the first requisite, for on that Hfe itself might 
depend. " From the moment of leaving St. Joe to 
the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento the 
pistol should never be absent from a man's right side," 
vvfrote a man who had made the journey. " Remember 
it is handier there than on the other, — nor the bowie 
knife from his left." "As to food," another man of 
experience wrote, " it should always be observed that 
children as well as adults require about twice the 
quantity of provisions which they would require at 
home for the same length of time." The reason being 
that " deprived of vegetables and other sauce " and 
living in the open air, they were ravenous for more of 
the food that could be carried than even the most liberal 
provider would dream. 

There were fewer women and children in this mad 
rush than in the normal emigration of settlers. These 
parties were chiefly made up of men, and young men 
at that ; but there were women too and even children ; 
and care had to be taken in the forming of companies 
that moved westward together to see that the number 
of fighting men equaled or exceeded the number of 
noncombatants. 

The departure in high spirits and all friendliness was 
apt to give way in forty-eight hours or less to friction 
that an unwonted mode of life and unknown qualities 
of companions inevitably occasioned in such chance 
combinations. Then these descendants of the men of 
Runnymede followed their racial bent and stopped their 
journey to elect a leader and form themselves into a 
sort of legislature to enact rules and try offenders, a 
town-meeting on wheels, apt to be swayed by oratory 
and emotion, but a form of government that effectively 
quelled disturbance and soothed the spirit of discontent. 

" The Prairie," wrote Ampere, " is for Americans 



$20,000 OR $30,000 A YEAR 399 

a magic word. One hears no more from them about 
the primeval woods. ' Prairie ' spells to them the 
future, it means progress, it is poetry." Slowly, by 
crawling ox-teams, the parties made their way over the 
varied zones marked out by Nature on the great flat 
map of the plains. The " weed prairie," rich in 
flowers ; the " rolling prairie," like a great undulating 
hayfield, stretching as far as sight could reach; the 
" motte prairie " ; the " salt prairie," where tufts of 
blue buffalo grass gave place to naked trodden earth 
around the " licks " and muddy springs where the great 
herds came to satisfy their craving for salt; and so on 
out to the sage-brush and the poisonous " soda prairie," 
where alkali glistened like hoar-frost. Then in time 
came the Rockies with their wonders and their hard- 
ships ; and after they were safely passed, more and ap- 
parently endless desert, where sage-brush and cactus 
grew too sparsely to cover weather-worn outcroppings 
of dull red stone and the crumbling beds of black lava, 
eloquent of a stormy geologic past. 

But few who made the journey were trained in 
science to note these signs of planet building. They 
saw only an arid landscape across which a well-worn, 
dusty trail stretched ever westward, marked at inter- 
vals by whitening bones of draft animals that had died 
of thirst and weariness; a trying, dreary desert 
where " a mule bitten in the jaw by a rattlesnake, lying 
dead beside a station tent," might be one of the freshest 
and most cheerful sights. 

And they were occupied with the threatening dangers 
and daily happenings of the march. The first death in 
the party, from the discharge of a gun, accidental or 
otherwise, was a tragic enigma, more mysterious 
than death at home. The illness of a woman or child 
brought a rush of sympathy, and the whole caravan 



400 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

halted until the suffering was over or the delay im- 
perilled the safety of all. The great herds of buffalo 
that darkened the plain like a cloud; the mockery of 
a mirage that intensified the torturing lack of water; 
the heat or the fierce storms that swept the region in 
alternating seasons ; all had their effect on the spirits 
and courage of the little company, as did the play of 
personality on personality under such soul-revealing 
conditions. And ever present was the menace of In- 
dian attack that make necessary vigilance by day, and 
by night the guarded wagon-stockade, wagon chained 
to wagon with all the beasts and goods and women 
gathered inside its circle of canvas-covered prairie 
schooners. 

And when California was reached, all dun colored 
and dusty gray at the end of the dry season, save for 
the vivid green of an occasional pepper tree, or the 
almost black growth of its coniferous forests, what a 
land of exaggerated, impossible contrasts it seemed. 
Its mushroom towns of a hundred tents and shanties, 
where tents rented at twenty or forty thousand dollars 
a year, and games of chance went on under their roofs 
in which equal sums were staked on the turn of a card, 
appeared scarcely less abnormal than its landscape. 
Tents and players might vanish in a night, leaving 
nothing behind ; or they might give place in a few 
weeks to closely built city blocks that housed thousands 
where the tents had sheltered scores, but where all lived 
at the same mad speed. The gambling, the boasting, 
the drinking and shooting, the lavish, ill-ordered 
spending, the uncouth and unexpected bits of senti- 
ment and the crystal pure " grit " with which the ups 
and downs of that wild life were met and borne, have 
become trite to us through much repetition in graphic 
pen pictures by Bret Harte and his imitators. It is 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 401 

a kind of life America has known ever since, in one part 
or another of its territory, — in California or the Rock- 
ies or Alaska, — but then it was absolutely new, a burst- 
ing of American energy out of the trammels of Puritan- 
ism and the sober hardships of backwoods pioneering. 
The staunchest Puritan Father would have had his 
manners, if not his morals, wrenched a little in that 
atmosphere. The most carefully trained Methodist lad 
took to ways and forms of speech that would have 
horrified the gentle ladies and pious men of his family 
back East. But early training dies hard, and when 
Sunday came, the diggers with one accord laid aside 
their shovels to devote the day to, — purposes of 
washing ! 

If morals were lax according to the Eastern code, 
they had one of their own. It was not etiquette to in- 
quire too curiously into a man's past, particularly to 
ask what he had been called " when he lived at home." 
The journey west wiped the slate clean. Least said 
was soonest mended, and misfortune or a too straight 
aim might explain much. But if a man transgressed 
the elastic code of the community to which he had 
come, there was a vigilance committee to see that he did 
not violate it a second time. There was a rude kind 
of generosity in the justice. Stories of the murderers 
allowed to choose their own juries, which hung them, 
with no hard feelings on either side, have been told 
often enough to be believed. And quite aside from 
crime or deserved misfortune, there was hard luck 
in plenty which set men " temporarily " to strange 
tasks, — an ex-judge to driving an ox team, an ex- 
governor to playing the fiddle in a saloon, or lawyers 
and doctors to turn their hands to various and uncon- 
genial tasks. But whatever they did they were all 
good Americans and incipient millionaires. 



402 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

From the nature of their new calling they were 
nomads. The pioneer settler had depended on his own 
labor for food, and was stationary for the time being 
at least, on the tract of land upon which he settled. 
He felled his trees and tilled his field, with a rifle ready 
beside him. But the miner did not plant and took 
no pleasure in broad fields. It was not the surface 
of the ground but a small portion of its inside that he 
wanted. He wandered about in search of it and when 
he had found it, dug it up and washed it prodigally 
away to cull his one harvest of golden grains. Mean- 
time he had to eat, and provisions were brought to 
him across thousands of miles. He bought them at 
exorbitant rates when he had funds, and fasted or was 
grub-staked by a friend when he had none. When 
he had the money nothing was worth haggling about, 
if it was worth considering at all. A dollar a pound 
was the accepted price for foodstuffs, when they did 
not cost more. Eggs might soar to three dollars apiece 
if the extravagant miner took a fancy to have them. 
Doctors charged $ioo or $50 for a visit, or gave their 
services for nothing. Boots worth $6 in New York 
sold for $100, and twenty dollar revolvers for $150. 
Fractional money was a nuisance; ten-cent coins, the 
smallest in circulation, were apt to infuriate the re- 
cipient and land in the brush instead of in his pocket. 
There is a tale of a $20, twenty-gallon cask of brandy 
which was kept full during the long trip to California 
by the simple expedient of pouring in water whenever 
brandy was extracted; and which finally sold in Sac- 
ramento for more than five hundred per cent, on the 
original investment. Yet for all the wild extravagance 
of living, statistics prove that the money dug out of 
the earth in those frenzied years, came to only about 
$600, or less than two dollars a day, for the whole 



$20,000 OR $20,000 A YEAR 403 

number of men engaged in mining. Laborers in va- 
rious branches of industry received many times that 
much; yet such was the excitement of the game, the 
dazzling reward of success, and the hope springing 
eternal in each miner's breast, that other callings lan- 
guished and the hills were full of lean and often hungry 
men. Some of them stayed on for the rest of their 
lives, searching hopefully till the end. Those who re- 
turned, rich or poor, were greeted as though come back 
from the dead ; and had material for conversation and 
reflection for more years than they were likely to re- 
main above ground. And besides their personal ex- 
periences, good or bad, they brought back with them a 
life-giving breath of Western energy and belief in the 
future of the country whose vast extent they had 
measured and proved. 

They brought back also a different standard of 
values. Once acquired, that reckless disregard for ten- 
cent pieces might be curbed, but could never be eradi- 
cated. California changed the national and the indi- 
vidual viewpoint regarding money. In his impecunious 
youth Henry Clay centered his financial ambitions on 
" one hundred pounds a year Virginia money." Van 
Buren's $200,000 accumulated by his own energies had 
seemed to voters more than a man could honestly come 
by; and in the North, at least, $20,000 had long ago 
crystallized into a synonym for riches. 

" That 's Abner Johnson's boy," a little lad in New 
York State overheard a townsman say, referring to his 
small self as he sat holding the horses while his father 
traded at the country store. " Who 's Abner John- 
son ? " a new-comer asked. " Why he 's the richest 
man in Lewis County. He 's got $20,000 clear." 

Such a conversation could not have taken place after 
'49, though to this day in rural New England $20,000 



404 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

has a significance to the conservative mind far above 
its money value. " I 've figured it all out," said a 
dweller in the hill country, not many years ago. "If 
a man owns his farm up here and zvorks, he can get 
'most everything he needs for his livin' off it. He 
wants a little money for groceries and clothes, but not 
much. If he has his farm and $20,000 in the Savin's 
Bank and good bonds, he 's better off than the fellow 
worth $100,000 who lives in town. He has to work 
like thunder, an' pay rent, and in the end he ain't got 
nothin' to show for it." 

A city man who has his summer home on this same 
airy hilltop, musing aloud to the writer about his long 
life, told of running away to China when he was a 
youth, determined not to return until he had made a 
fortune large enough to retire upon. His people were 
well-to-do, he was accustomed to the best, and he re- 
solved that the amount should be ample. Twenty 
thousand dollars was the sum firmly fixed in his mind. 
He carried out his purpose and returned to find that 
$20,000 had shrunk meanwhile from a competency to 
a single year's income. 

Before the gold fever, one of our foreign visitors 
wrote that " nobody spends more than $10,000 a year 
in America." California miners when thoroughly 
aroused and interested were capable of spending 
$20,000 a minute. 

With the wide territorial expansion and the pictur- 
esque excesses of the gold fever, another period of our 
national life came to an end. Through very fullness 
of prosperity we ceased to be sufficient unto ourselves. 
An energetic business on the Pacific coast made neces- 
sary much traffic by sea; and steamers not being able 
to carry their motive power in a sheet of canvas as 
the old sailing ships had done, there was need for coal- 



$20,000 OR $30,000 A YEAR 405 

ing stations. This led to our friendly but not too 
gentle knocking at the door of Japan in 1852. That 
hermit kingdom had received foreigners kindly two 
hundred and fifty years before, had observed them 
with intelligent Asiastic eyes for a quarter of a century, 
and then closed its ports firmly against all professing 
the Christian faith; had forbidden the building of 
ships large enough to sail for Christian lands, and 
confiscated all such Japanese-owned ships then in exist- 
ence. And at the time that happened Japan had colon- 
ies farther away than Massachusetts is from England. 
What occurred to turn hospitality to such black depths 
of distrust we can only conjecture. It required a 
fleet and guns, commanded by the brother of the hero 
of Lake Erie, and backed by a young republic's sub- 
lime confidence in its own good will, to force open 
doors that refused to be unlocked. 

On our own continent the mere weight of travel 
brought to the front new questions. The movement 
toward California across the Isthmus gave new life 
to that old chimera, a ship canal. The desert had to 
be bridged by law and order to link the East with 
settlements so far away. Kansas and Nebraska terri- 
tories were organized ; and with this the slavery ques- 
tion, that had brought on the Mexican War and that 
had lurked cloaked and specter-like in the background 
from the beginning of the government, threw off its 
disguise and came out into the open, no longer a 
specter but a demon. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 

A THOUGHTFUL writer has said that Ameri- 
cans have " a national capacity for expecting 
national greatness." It was of course just 
this capacity that made the country in the first place 
and then developed it. Lafayette summed up our 
ideals and our early resources when he called our 
American Revolution " the grandest of contests won 
by skirmishes of sentinels and outposts." The out- 
come of that contest and the next one with England 
did not shake our young confidence in our motives or 
our destiny. Our wonderful physical growth con- 
firmed the belief that everything of ours must be big 
and good and bound to rise higher ; that just because 
it was American it would expand and was quite in- 
capable of sinking. To a cynic these properties sug- 
gest an unflattering comparison ; but the enthusiast sees 
in them only aspiration. 

The same optimism, our buoyant hope springing 
from a substratum of Puritan consecration, has enabled 
us many times to overcome impossibilities. It enabled 
us to keep clean and wholesome such a scramble for 
wealth as that rush to California. In a word, our 
motive power as a nation is spiritual rather than utili- 
tarian, wide-spread belief to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing. We are a sentimental people, and though over- 
laid with a substantial covering of practicality, senti- 

406 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 407 

ment has come to the surface time and again to change 
our history in the making. 

At Monroe's second election, for example, the vote 
in the electoral college was virtually unanimous. It 
just failed of unanimity, but, oh, the wide difference ! 
A New Hampshire man wrote upon his ballot the name 
of John Quincy Adams, explaining to his colleagues 
that since Washington had been elected by unanimous 
vote, it was due to his memory that no one else 
should share the honor. 

The unexpected act is typical of our American ways. 
We go along in humdrum fashion, intent on the busi- 
ness in hand, which is as often as not a work of de- 
struction, and is oftener than not connected with dol- 
lars. Quite without warning a word is spoken, a chord 
of memory struck, and suddenly no persuasion in the 
world could tempt us to do the thing that a moment 
before seemed natural, if not inevitable. Whatever it 
is, it is done without breast-beating parade, almost with 
levity, for race amalgamation has corroded phlegm and 
sharpened stolidity and slowed up Latin emotionalism 
into a type of mind blessed with a keen sense of the 
absurd and cursed with a most cowardly horror of 
making itself ridiculous. The grim frontier jest that 
pictures a lynching party discovering its mistake too 
late and apologizing to the widow in the cryptic words, 
" The laugh is on us, ma'am," is nearer truth than 
fiction. We act as though ashamed of the sentiment 
that moves us and indulge the national sense of the 
ridiculous at the expense of emotion, even of rever- 
ence. 

With changing conditions, national sentiment has 
showed itself at different periods in varied and char- 
acteristic ways. Before so many racial elements came 
to dwell among us, its expression was more sedate. 



4o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

It is doubtful if any of the continental worthies could 
have understood that lynching story, with the possible 
exception of Franklin, the only one of them born with 
the quality that has since come into its own as Ameri- 
can humor. 

Even in the sedate days our tribute to public men 
was apt to be paid in somewhat free and easy fashion. 
Washington is the only one in our national pantheon 
to whom decorous reverence has always been made. 
The admirers of Franklin who knew his reputation 
abroad were astonished when they came to this coun- 
try and made a pilgrimage to his tomb to find only a 
plain white slab in " an obscure corner of an obscure 
burying-ground," Not even a path led to it. But they 
might have found food for thought in the fact that 
the tall grass about it was pressed down by the tread 
of many feet, and that there was no need of a guide to 
show them the way. 

The roads leading to the homes of our early Vir- 
ginia Presidents were filled with admirers who arrived, 
according to the custom of the South, by coach and 
chariot, bringing their horses and their servants, and 
staying sometimes for days to cumber the stables and 
empty the larder. Washington, one of the richest 
Americans of his generation, escaped bankruptcy, hav- 
ing the fortune to die within three years of laying down 
the Presidency. The others all suffered. Jefferson 
paid the penalty of fame by being literally eaten out 
of house and home, and his biographer's idyllic state- 
ment that " no hard work was done at Monticello " 
scarcely tallies with the assertion of his daughter that 
she and her household servants were sometimes called 
upon to provide beds for half a hundred people. 
Monroe said of his visitors that " some were bounties 
and some were taxes." On the whole he thought that 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 409 

there were enough of the former to offset the latter; 
but in his opinion pensions for Ex-Presidents were a 
necessity, since under our repubHcan plan they could 
not shut their doors and refuse hospitality to this 
sentimental horde without discredit to the country. 

Aiitres temps, autres mcriirs. Ex-Presidents are left 
in comparative seclusion now, and the lawns of Presi- 
dential candidates suffer. But there is a deal more 
than selfish and lively expectation of favors to come 
in the acclaim given a President or a President- 
elect. Monroe's shrunken figure in his old-fashioned 
military coat, light small-clothes, and obsolete head- 
gear, the " Last Cocked Hat," was insignificant enough ; 
and neither his personality nor the few offices at his 
disposal explained the furor with which he was greeted 
on that tour of his into the enemy's country shortly 
after he assumed office. The campaign had been un- 
usually bitter, but the whole population turned out 
and politics were forgotten in enthusiasm for the 
mighty country this unimposing little man represented. 
Men who for years had never willingly entered the 
same room suddenly found it agreeable to sit side by 
side at banquets and to shout themselves hoarse to- 
gether in the frenzy of fireworks, cheers, and artillery 
salutes that marked the President's progress. " The 
demon of party for a time departed and gave place 
to a general outburst of national feeling." Amazed 
and delighted, the people fell to analyzing their own 
sensations, and when the Boston " Sentinel " called 
it an era of good feeling, enthusiastically adopted the 
phrase into the language of the day. 

Such furors have swept the country again and again : 
sometimes for a person : sometimes in recognition of a 
great gift, as in the case of Jenny Lind; sometimes in 
an ovation to foreigners, like Kossuth and Garibaldi, 



4IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

for gallant efforts in behalf of principles Americans 
hold dear. 

The crowning tribute of this kind was given to one 
who belonged both to Europe and America, to the first 
by birth, but to us if brotherly sympathy counts for any- 
thing at all. When Lafayette returned after fifty years 
to lay the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, the 
number of our States had doubled. As Clay said in 
his address of welcome, a whole new world had come 
into being. Lafayette himself had experienced tragic 
vicissitudes in that half century. He had done his 
ineffectual best for Marie Antoinette, kneeling in dumb 
show of loyalty to kiss her hand on the balcony at 
Versailles while the mob howled below. The French 
Revolution had spared his life, but it had swept away 
all his wealth and inflicted upon him imprisonment and 
hardships too painful to remember. He had come to 
us as a young man in a ship of his own purchasing, 
with a gift of arms for the continental soldiers. For 
this second visit President Monroe, who as a subaltern 
had been wounded on the same American battle-field 
with Lafayette, offered him the courtesy of a na- 
tional ship. This Lafayette declined, preferring, he 
said, to come as a private person to meet old friends 
and renew old ties. Having little vanity, he could 
not dream of the welcome that awaited him. " It 
will burst ! " he cried, pressing both hands upon his 
heart, while tears streamed down his honest cheeks 
when on landing he realized the fervor of the greet- 
ing. 

The pent-up enthusiasm of fifty years was in those 
shouts, not only in tribute to his winning personality, 
but in gratitude for the help and comfort he had 
brought us on his first visit. Young and old, grave 
and gay, were caught up and carried out of their ordi- 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 411 

nary behavior. Dr. Bowditch of Boston, the mathe- 
matician, confessed that instead of waiting in quiet 
dignity as he meant to do to watch Lafayette go by, 
he seemed to lose his senses at first sight of him, and 
regained them to find himself out with the crowd in 
the middle of the street battling to reach the barouche 
and huzzahing with all his might. 

If Lafayette had not been the sincerest and most 
genuine of men, and full of wiry health as well, he 
could never have survived that twelvemonth of ova- 
tions. He visited every State, almost every important 
town, interested in all that was new, reminiscent of all 
that was old, graciously playing his part in every cere- 
mony, whether it was standing godfather to all the 
children born in his path, as his compatriots said he 
did ; or leading the blind, white-haired widow of Gen- 
eral Montgomery through a minuet; or fraternizing 
with Harvard graduates on class day; or gossiping 
with old men who had served as privates in the Revo- 
lution. Interminable processions by day and recep- 
tions by night robbed him of half his rest, but left 
him apparently unwearied. 

Light-heartedness and tact helped him through 
moments that would have been trying to a more self- 
centered man; and he was not above slyly seeking in- 
formation to use it again with happy effect an hour 
later. " Now tell me all about this place, and for what 
it is remarkable," he commanded Josiah Ouincy, who 
as governor's aide accompanied him through Massa- 
chusetts. " This place " happened to be Andover, 
where Quincy had attended school, and the answer 
lacked neither detail nor picturesqueness. Lafayette 
treasured all the hints, and in his speech, seasoned 
with his French accent, made happy reference to An- 
dover's pride, the theological seminary, as that sacred 



412 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

hill from which hope had gone .forth to the heathen 
and light to the uttermost parts of the earth. A little 
later Quincy met a proud and beaming townsman. 

" I was really surprised," he said, " at the particu- 
lar and accurate knowledge that General Lafayette 
possesses. I always knew that in the religious world 
our theological seminary was an object of great con- 
cern ; but I never supposed that in the courts and camps 
of Europe so much interest was taken in it." Quincy 
answered diplomatically that, after the talk he had 
had with the General, he was not surprised by his 
knowledge of local conditions. 

But there were many places where Lafayette's 
memory needed no prompting. On the trip up the 
Hudson he was on deck betimes to show his son the 
spot where Major Andre had been arrested ; he de- 
scribed Wayne's capture of Stony Point with eloquent 
hands and voice ; and pointed out the house where the 
Commander-in-chief and he were breakfasting with 
Mrs. Arnold at the time Washington learned of 
Arnold's treason. In Washington his mind ran for- 
ward as well as back, for here in a capital that had not 
then existed was most clearly to be seen the difference 
between the country he had left and the one to which 
he returned. As Clay put it, here he was " in the 
midst of posterity." The brilliant and dashing Clay 
captivated him. That was the man he wished to see 
President, he declared. But in his kindness of heart 
he found time to spend an hour with another of the 
unsuccessful Presidential candidates of 1824, the 
stricken Crawford, sitting so close to his paralyzed 
side that his attitude seemed an embrace. 

Three of his good friends of other days, Madison, 
Adams, and Jefferson, were now Ex-Presidents. La- 
fayette's meeting with the latter on the lawn at Monti- 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 413 

cello, whither he had been escorted with trumpets 
and banners, was a moment of sudden change from 
gaiety to pathos. The trumpets ceased in the middle 
of a note and every head was bared as the General, a 
fine portly figure betraying little infirmity save the 
slight limp he had carried since Brandywine, dis- 
mounted to embrace his host. JefTerson, advancing 
to meet him, looked emaciated and old as well as ill. 
He was suffering physically, and mentally also, from 
troubles that were soon to drive him from the home he 
loved. And for all Lafayette's jauntiness, he was no 
longer young. He was nearing seventy, and there 
were wrinkles upon his face that the fine brown wig 
pulled low on his forehead could not hide. 

It was in the ceremony at Bunker Hill that enthusi- 
asm culminated. The weather was perfect, justify- 
ing the pious belief that the Lord would not permit 
it to rain on that day ; and the number of spectators 
was limited only by physical possibilities of space and 
transportation. " Everything that had wheels and 
everything that had legs " moved toward the monu- 
ment. In a room apart from the crowd Lafayette 
met the forty survivors of the battle, greeting each 
with the tenderness of a personal friend. No officer 
of field or staff remained alive, but one old captain, 
tottering with the weight of his ninety-five years, 
brought the far-off days of King George very close 
indeed. A young aide, the only person in the room 
who was not of that past time, pinned a badge over 
the heart of each veteran, and they filed out into the 
June sunshine for the ceremony. With them and the 
other survivors of the Revolution Lafayette elected to 
sit after he had done his part in laying the corner-stone. 
" I belong there," he said, refusing the chair of honor 
that had been prepared for him, and took his place 



414 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

among them, his chestnut wig giving him a strangely 
youthful air in that company. 

The same chaplain who had invoked a blessing be- 
fore the soldiers went into action made a prayer, and 
Webster, rising, set the emotional key in those two 
opening words of his address, " Venerable men " 
spoken to the gray-haired band in that wonderful 
voice of his. It was more wonderful than ever that 
day, vibrant with feeling, and all his power of oratory 
and all his wealth of patriotism seemed concentrated 
in his speech. He played upon the vast audience as 
upon an instrument. Wave upon wave of feeling 
passed across the sea of upturned faces as cloud 
shadows pass over a meadow. He himself felt it as 
something almost uncanny. " I never," he said, speak- 
ing of it, " desire to behold again the awful spectacle 
of so many human faces all turned toward me." His 
popularity had lately been under partial eclipse, but 
this address, so eloquent and adequate, set him in 
full favor again, and many little accustomed to weep 
found the sunshine suddenly dimmed by a mist of 
sentiment and tears. 

Materially the country felt itself still much in La- 
fayette's debt. Besides the aid of his sword and cour- 
age, he had expended a fortune in our behalf, equipping 
a regiment and bringing us a ship. As an officer of the 
Revolution he was entitled to a grant of land and pay 
for his services. The latter he accepted only after his 
patrimony had been swept away by the Revolution in 
France. The former had been assigned him in the 
new territory of Louisiana, which, as Jejfferson wrote 
one of his Italian correspondents, " enabled us to do 
a handsome thing for Fayette." " Locations can be 
found adjacent to the city of New Orleans . . . the 
value of which cannot be calculated. I hope it will 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 415 

induce him to come over and settle there with his 
family." A thousand acres of such land were set apart 
for him by his agent, but Congress, not being informed, 
granted the same tract to the city, and Lafayette with 
princely unselfishness refused to press his own prior 
claim. ** He could have no contest with the Ameri- 
can people," he said. 

During Lafayette's second visit. Congress bent on 
reparation, voted him two hundred thousand dollars 
in money and twenty-four thousand acres of " fertile 
land in Florida," which, so far as known, never proved 
of great benefit to him or his heirs. But it is a satis- 
faction to remember that this greatest wave of popu- 
lar feeling did not ebb without leaving a token more 
tangible than sighs and good wishes. And without 
that perhaps the account between Lafayette and our- 
selves was balanced, after all. No man is without his 
faults ; even neighborly gallantry may get his best 
friends into trouble ; and we are told that it is to Lafay- 
ette we are indebted for that pest of our farms, the 
thistle, sent over from France in a package of seeds 
addressed to Mrs. Madison and marked " very rare." 

Sometimes, alas ! a wave of popular sympathy in 
this sentimental country of ours lapses without prac- 
tical result. This happened when Jefferson's financial 
straits became known. A subscription was started, 
and twenty thousand dollars was sent him, with the 
intimation that it was merely a first payment for 
value received. Jefferson accepted it in the spirit in 
which it was sent. " I have spent three times as much 
money and given my whole life to my countrymen," 
he said. " Now they come nobly forward in the only 
way they can and save an old servant from being turned 
like a dog out of doors." But the impulse died down, 
and his home had to be sacrificed, after all. 



4i6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

An interesting and possibly pertinent fact to be re- 
membered in considering national sentiment is that the 
successful warrior has cast his spell over us as he has 
over other nations since the dawn of history. The 
United States is a country devoted to ideals of peace, 
but war Presidents elected by the people would have 
governed about half the time had not death intervened. 
Peace, like heaven, seems indeed a hypothetical state 
of bliss, laudable and longed for in theory, but secretly 
feared as deadly dull to live in. In his autobiography 
General Scott sets forth the idea that men at heart adore 
fighting, and to prove it asserts that he had been told 
by Revolutionary worthies that Jefferson, brilliant and 
successful though he was, felt himself discredited and 
ill at ease in the presence of Washington, not because 
of Washington's calm dignity and great wisdom, but 
because of his military record; and that it was this 
" painful sense of inferiority " that forced him into 
political opposition. It is an interesting theory ; and 
it must be confessed that we find a military record a 
valuable asset in any walk of life. It would make 
curious reading could a table be compiled that would 
show how many candidates for office, from coroner 
to President, have been helped up the political ladder 
by bayonet and carbine. 

Perhaps the real reason is that a successful military 
record argues fearlessness and ability to strike out 
from the shoulder, qualities that have always had their 
fascination for us. We have done not a little in the 
way of hero-worship in the United States, but we have 
done much more in worshiping the heroic spirit; and 
the admiration of which we have been lavish has been 
most freely offered before the shrine of pure motive 
and high ideal. 

One proof of this is that although our national sense 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 417 

of humor is keen, there is a distrust of the very same 
quality when it comes to serious matters of govern- 
ment. A pre-Revolutionary earnestness hngers 
among us yet to discredit wit and condemn satire in 
our pubHc servants. Humor has been a pitfall to 
many unwary politicians, and a quick tongue and a 
sense of the ridiculous have proved the undoing of 
more than one statesman amply endowed with talent 
and patriotism. Voters are willing to be amused by 
such men. They elect them to Congress, sometimes 
even to the Senate, but there they stop. John Ran- 
dolph's opium-tinged display of " intellectual jewelry " 
had rightly the morbid charm of a pathological ex- 
hibit; but the saner brilliant speeches of congressional 
wits from his day down to Thomas B. Reed have kept 
them from higher offices in the gift of the people. The 
one man with a reputation for humor who has been 
elected to the Presidency was elected not because of, 
but in spite of it. It was the unanswerable logic of his 
Cooper Institute speech and the white fearlessness of 
Lincoln's character, not his stories, that brought him 
success. Americans laugh at and with almost any- 
thing, but they take their country seriously. They 
often shirk their own part in the job of government, 
and revile political methods ; but they hold their Gov- 
ernment too sacred to be trusted in the hands of a 
jester. 

" In the privacy of their houses," wrote Miss Mar- 
tineau eighty years ago, " many citizens have lamented 
to me with feelings to which no name but grief can 
be given that the events of 1832-33 have suggested the 
words * use ' or ' value of the Union.' To an Ameri- 
can, a calculation of the value of the Union would 
formerly have been as offensive, as absurd as an esti- 
mate of the value of religion would be to a right- 



4i8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

minded man. To Americans of this order the Union 
has long been more than a matter of high utility. It 
has been idealized into an object of love and venera- 
tion. In answer to this cui bono? many have cried 
in their hearts with Lear, ' O reason not the need ! ' 
. . . But instances of carelessness or levity about the 
Union are very rare, and this is the reason why more 
show of attachment to it is not made." 

Protestations of devotion are still rarer now. Even 
on the Fourth of July they are thought to be in ques- 
tionable taste. But question the fact of patriotism and 
see what happens. 

The change in the fashion of expressing sentiment 
can be seen in the political nicknames that have fol- 
lowed one another through the century. 

Washington was the Father of his Country ; Madi- 
son, Father of the Constitution; Jackson, the Preserver 
of the Union; Webster, Defender of the Constitution; 
Fremont, the Pathfinder ; William Henry Harrison, 
the Cincinnatus of the West. Names all of them as 
high sounding as titles in the age of chivalry, as well 
merited, doubtless, and acquired in the same way by 
popular acclaim. They have in them a world of grati- 
tude and admiration, but little levity. Side by side 
with them, though beginning a little later and growing 
more marked as the new Western note crept into poli- 
tics, is another group equally admiring, but expressing 
greater intimacy of feeling, and more daring, if not 
more wit. The Last Cocked Hat, applied to Monroe ; 
J. O. Adams's Old Man Eloquent; Jackson's Old 
Chief and Old Hickory ; Zachary Taylor's Old Rough 
and Ready ; Clay's Gallant Harry of the West ; Doug- 
las's Little Giant; and the Honest Old Abe that grew 
with Lincoln's cares and responsibilities into the fond 
and trusting Father Abraham. Of late years still 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 419 

greater familiarity has crept in. Each can extend the 
list to suit himself. But it must not be forgotten that 
parallel to both, beginning very early and continuing 
on, is a third set, cruelly caustic, like His Superfluous 
Excellency applied to the elder Adams, and the Fox 
of Kinderhook directed against Van Buren, showing 
how keen is the people's demand for virtue, and that 
their criticism never sleeps. 

First and last enough sentiment has been expended 
upon American politics to equip a regiment of poets 
laureate. Distinctly American holidays are full of it. 
Fourth of July, of course, made itself. The twenty- 
second of February became one by common consent. 
It had its origin at a convivial supper in a New York 
tavern in 1783, when a company met to listen to an 
original ode and drink innumerable toasts. Enthusi- 
asm survived the wine, and as the gentlemen went 
gaily and unsteadily home they swore to meet again on 
future anniversaries. Regarded at first as a purely 
party custom, it broadened beyond Federal circles to 
take in all Americans. Jefferson's followers attempted 
a similar observance in his honor, but he countered with 
another bit of sentiment, refusing to divulge the date, 
on the ground that only the birthday of the nation 
should be so treated. Thanksgiving was sectional and 
religious as well as political, and sentiment graced it 
in plenty. One of the customs that lingered in good 
old New England households until the middle of the 
last century was to lay five grains of corn upon the 
plate of every person at table in memory of a day in 
early colonial history when five ships came sailing into 
harbor just in time to chase away the specter of famine. 
It was Washington who appointed the first national 
day of thanksgiving at the instance of Congress, after 
the adoption of the Constitution. For many years, 



420 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

however, annual observance of the day remained a 
matter of state action, virtually confined to New Eng- 
land. Like the twenty-second of February, it became 
a national custom only gradually. Unlike the twenty- 
second of February, it spread largely through the in- 
fluence of a woman, Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale, who ad- 
vocated it for twenty years, in the editorial columns 
of " Godey's Lady's Book " and in private letters to 
many governors. 

On the first inauguration day both Washington and 
Vice-President Adams took the oath of office clad from 
head to foot in garments grown and spun and fash- 
ioned on American soil. And the form of oath in 
which they pledged their loyalty has been carefully re- 
peated by office-holders high and low ever since. 

The color of the West Point uniform records an- 
other bit of feeling. It is a little sentimental note on 
the forgotten battle of Chippewa, when there was not 
enough blue cloth in the country to cover our small 
army, and the British commander, seeing a gray line of 
regulars advance, mistook them, to his undoing, for 
" nothing but a body of Buffalo militia." 

How quickly our public ear responds to rhythm or 
effective wording is seen in the eagerness with which 
some telling phrase is caught up and made to do duty 
as a rally ing-cry. Even the lilt of campaign songs 
and ephemeral, but temporarily popular campaign 
slang have turned the tide of battle. Marcy's glib 
justification of rewarding party loyalty, " To the 
victors belong the spoils," and the not quite frank 
" Fifty- four forty or fight," each did yeoman's service; 
and when it comes to more serious and sentimental 
utterances, their influence has been enormous. " Mil- 
lions for defense, but not one cent for tribute " both 
added to and steadied excitement in the X. Y. Z. affair. 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 421 

Oay's " Free trade and sailors' rights " helped on the 
War of 1812. "Liberty and Union, one and in- 
separable, now and forever " out of Webster's reply to 
Hayne was a resounding line plucked from among 
the innumerable words of the Nullification debates 
and exalted into a national watchword. How much 
the glowing title of that new patriotic song the " Star- 
Spangled Banner " did to inspire enlistment, and the 
harder duty of cheerful endurance in the discouraging 
days of British invasion and burning, or how far 
Lawrence's dying injunction not to give up the ship 
has carried individual Americans from that day to this 
in deeds of heroism each heart must determine for 
itself. 

Once in a long while sentiment obliterates for an 
hour even our sense of humor. When Saxe-Weimer 
was traveling in this country, a dinner was given in 
his honor by the German Society of Philadelphia. 
Wishing to pay him the highest respect, they arranged 
to have only German music. Fortunately the genial 
duke's sense of fun was equal to the strain. " Our 
waiters were black," he wrote describing the occasion. 
" Even the music was performed by blacks, because 
white musicians will never perform at public enter- 
tainments. After every toast the music struck up; 
but our virtuosi were only acquainted with two Ger- 
man pieces. After drinking my health, they played 
* Ein Schiisserl und ein Reimerl,' and after the toast 
was given of ' The" German Athens,' they played ' O du 
lieber Augustin ! ' " 

" On the eighth day of January next, wind, weather, 
and snow permitting," a frontier paper announced late 
in 1837, " the Great Prairie will be set on fire in com- 
memoration of the great Whig victory in New York. 
The Prairie is about 300 miles long, with an average 



422 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

breadth of from ten to twenty miles. The fires to be 
Hghted at eight o'clock in the evening." 

There is a wide and breezy enthusiasm about that 
which can not fail to awaken a responsive chord in 
every American breast, though as to fitness there might 
be room for difference of opinion. However enthusi- 
asm may stray from the path of fitness in such minor 
matters, in great crises American sentiment can be 
trusted not to go wrong. There were no huzzahs at 
Yorktown when the British gave up their swords ; at 
Vicksburg no humiliating cheers added to the bitter- 
ness of defeat. Instead, there was a brotherly pres- 
sure of hands and a breaking of bread. The end of 
the Rebellion was marked by no widespread celebra- 
tion of victory. Men, as best they could, set about 
obeying Lincoln's injunction to bind up the nation's 
wounds. 

In the early Western migration there was little 
time for anything except daily tasks, and little room 
to carry anything beyond the barest practical necessi- 
ties. But sentiment found a place in the pack of every 
immigrant family that crossed the Alleghanies. They 
could carry names with them, if nothing else. 

The cabin and the fare might be poor indeed, but 
a loom in the corner reproduced patterns woven " back 
yonder," and the names by which they were called, 
repeated over and over, carried the mind far rolling 
through biblical history in the wake of " Chariot 
Wheels," or through the heavens with the " Seven 
Stars," to bring it to earth again in some dearly loved 
garden spot beside a " Double Snowball " or a " Briar 
Rose." 

The names these immigrants gave their new homes 
are themselves a record of no mean interest. Often 
they repeated the name of the old home left east of the 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 423 

mountains, as that had recalled some village around a 
gray Norman tower under moist English skies. They 
tell a tale of loyalty and homesickness, and of sturdy 
New World faith in ability to carve a home " equally 
as good " out of the forest or the rich prairie loam 
or the alkali of their new dwelling-places. 

In their trail can be followed successive waves of 
thought and culture. Lexington, Kentucky, was 
christened by some hunters who were camping on that 
spot when they first heard of the battle. The revolt 
against Puritan dominion is to be seen in the nightmare 
medley of Greek and classic names with which central 
New York is covered. The few Indian names that 
have survived race prejudice for their music's sake tell 
a story of their own, as does the boastful exuberance 
of those names ending in " opolis," planted along the 
line of march in a spirit of commercial optimism that 
withered into failure, which remain to clog the land- 
scape like last year's burrs. As we journey westward, 
alongside exotic French and Spanish saints and royal 
personages who fastened their tenacious names deep in 
our free soil years before men of English origin came 
to dispute them, are harsh descriptive phrases that etch 
like a biting acid the picture of a brave and virile and 
not over-squeamish phase of our young civilization, — 
the Deadwoods and Mudholes and Long-a-Comings of 
the miners and ranchmen who carried abundant senti- 
ment in their hearts, but counted it weakness and strove 
to hide it under callousness and profanity. How senti- 
ment grew and flourished on the new soil, and what 
strange and sometimes perverted forms it took, many 
a bit of local nomenclature shows. 

They are interesting reading, these names on our 
map. And rightly read, they yield up an unassailable 
history of American politics. The number of Clay and 



424 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Calhoun and Webster counties testifies to the popular- 
ity of those famous leaders, and the Scott and Taylor 
and Harrison counties show what a hold military suc- 
cess had upon our peaceful imagination. While an oc- 
casional state capital may bear the name of a President, 
or a large and thriving city the name of our favorite 
Frenchman, even the beloved Franklin was not deemed 
worthy of having a State named after him, that honor 
being reserved for Washington alone. 

It is too soon for the country to have attained the 
finished beauty that covers the seamy side of Europe. 
We are still delving in our soil, and still cherish our 
American ideals, some of us with yearning, some with 
a hot conviction that makes it hard to remember they 
are still only a hope for the future, not an accomplished 
fact. 

When we think of our nation as hopelessly material, 
given over to pursuit of wealth and without the saving 
grace of poetry, it is well to remember that a vision 
brought our forebears across the sea ; that American 
conceptions of liberty are not prosaic, however short 
of ideal their working out may be ; that the country's 
industrial development has been like an epic, and Amer- 
ican invention a dream of magic. Stern necessity 
forced the early workers of the country to be practi- 
cal. Men had instantly to take up their part in feeding 
and defending the struggling settlements; and women 
found their hands more than full in rearing children 
and contriving orderly households out of the abundant 
lack with which they were surrounded. Even after 
pioneer days were over they were under the same ne- 
cessity to dig or die. Confronted by the unsightly 
gashes such work makes in nature's beauty, they 
scarcely heeded them, so intent were they upon what 
these gashes were to become. It has not been through 



SENTIMENT AMONG THE PEOPLE 425 

lack of idealism, but because of it, that we have over- 
looked much that was crude and even laughable in our 
daily life. And if the time ever comes when this flame 
of hope dies out, leaving only ashes of criticism, it will 
usher in sad and perilous days for our beloved land. 



CHAPTER XX 

SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 

THE American mind tends to idealism but not 
to reverence. With a passionate belief in 
things that are to be, it has shown small re- 
spect for things that are or things that have been. 
Perhaps optimism for the future is incompatible with 
reverence for the past. To fight toward an ideal one 
must be willing to destroy. 

Reform was the reason for our being a nation; it is 
not strange, therefore, that efforts toward betterment 
have from the first appealed to our people, nor that we 
have chosen to do such work in companies. " Wher- 
ever," wrote De Tocqueville, " at the head of some 
new undertaking, you find the government in France 
or a man of rank in England, in the United States you 
will be sure to find an association." 

First there was the association of the colonies. In- 
side this combination grew up the great political par- 
ties. Then came the banding together of groups of 
men in the interest of many social reforms. Some of 
these remained aloof from politics, but others honey- 
combed the great parties and brought about the forma- 
tion of new ones. From this point of view our history 
has been a series of associations, breaking up into ever 
smaller units until like figures in a kaleidoscope, a 
multitude of them rush together again to form some 
new and dominating combination. 

The broadening opportunities for education and the 
426 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 427 

narrowing of opportunities to make a living can both 
be traced in such associations ; the first in their grow- 
ing numbers; the second in their history of increasing 
bitterness and changing methods. Unhappily the 
saying that anarchists are " the result of a university 
education on an empty stomach," is too true to be amus- 
ing ; but fortunately in the years of which we have been 
thinking there were few empty stomachs in America, 
and those devastating furies of the modern world were 
as yet unknown. A leaven of political unrest was at 
work however. A disillusioned portion of society ad- 
mitted that neither the Declaration of Independence 
nor the triumph of the Democratic party had brought 
about the millennium. But it still had faith in a mil- 
lennium, and went about its labor of reform ardent 
and earnest, and bothersome to fellow-citizens who 
were inclined to let well enough alone. 

Its desire for change found expression in move- 
ments of many kinds, three of which were notable be- 
tween the beginning of the century and the Civil War. 
The first occurred about 1812 and was semi-religious 
in character. It led to the formation of many mission- 
ary and temperance societies and to nation-wide federa- 
tion of church denominations, which until then enjoyed 
only local organization. 

Through interest in orphan asylums and like enter- 
prises with a civic as well as philanthropic bearing, 
these gradually merged into reforms more social than 
religious. Increasing rapidly in number, they reached 
their greatest loquacity and popularity during the dec- 
ade between 1830 and 1840 which has been called with 
uncomplimentary levity, the hot-air period of American 
history. Discussing the need for reforms such as these 
reawakened class consciousness that had slumbered 
peacefully during the years when all America worked 



428 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

with its hands. Roused afresh, this once more en- 
tered politics, chiefly by means of organizations among 
laborers to secure better hours and better laws, — the 
first beginnings of vast industrial armies that were to 
pit their strength half a century later against almost 
impregnable combinations of capital. The third align- 
ment, at once political and moral, was the one that took 
place for and against slavery just before the Civil War. 

Although reform is no matter of latitude and longi- 
tude, it seems true that less thought was given to it in 
the South than in the North. In the lavish care-free 
Southern life, with many servants, much was allowed 
to go at loose ends. Little attention was paid to de- 
tail and none at all to economy ; and it was natural that 
where effect rather than accuracy was esteemed, showy 
talents of oratory and emphatic speech should be ap- 
preciated. There was large tolerance for human 
frailties. More drinking and card playing went on 
than in the North. Horse-racing was so important 
that schools were given holiday during race week as 
a matter of course; and men were quick with their 
words and their weapons. They were large-hearted 
and generous, but less inclined to weigh moral values 
than New Englanders trained from childhood in careful 
management, and born with a cold-blooded preference 
for logic over emotion, and a grudging distrust of the 
pleasant things of life. 

But it is instructive to remember that up to the time 
of the Civil War our country was governed for forty- 
eight years by Southern presidents and only twenty- 
four years by men from Northern States. Further- 
more, that not one of the Northern Presidents was 
given a second term, while those from the South who 
lived to complete their terms of office were popular 
enough to win reelection, with but two exceptions. 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 429 

Like many other salutary and wholesome things, the 
spirit of censorship and reform in the New England 
temperament had to be taken in small doses with long 
intervals between. 

The nation was, however, predisposed to reform, 
and once inoculated its work went on even in periods 
of apparent rest. Nowhere is this more evident than 
in the change that came over voting in the United 
States. We who were brought up to consider man- 
hood suffrage almost a birthright, receive something of 
a shock when we learn that as late as 1800 only about 
one third of the heads of families in the country were 
allowed to vote. Accidents of religiori or property 
deprived two men out of three of the right. Vermont, 
the first new State to join the original thirteen, lived 
gallantly up to the spirit of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and adopted manhood suffrage in its consti- 
tution of 1777, but the other States hedged it about 
with whatever restrictions their lawmakers deemed 
safest and best. 

The Constitutional Convention with really masterly 
inactivity had refrained from raising a tempest that 
would have burst upon the country had it tried to im- 
pose uniform qualifications for electors of Federal 
officers. It contented itself with providing that elec- 
tors for representatives in Congress should possess 
" the qualifications requisite for electors of the most 
numerous branch of the state legislature," thus leav- 
ing the matter entirely within state control. 

Hamilton had wished to make property the basis of 
representation in order to enlist the solid material in- 
terests in preserving the Union. Jefferson's ideal of 
democracy, on the other hand, held suffrage to be a 
distinct right of the individual, no mere privilege of 
his possessions. Half way between the two was 



430 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Franklin's indulgent assertion that any form of gov- 
ernment may be a blessing to the people if well admin- 
istered, with its inescapable corollary that since the 
best has possibilities of evil, moral uprightness is the 
root of all political well-being. 

Jefferson's idea gained headway, and even before 
Washington died property qualifications had been re- 
duced in some of the States, and public sentiment al- 
ready showed a marked trend toward dropping all re- 
ligious tests from politics. The States admitted to the 
Union after 1800 were comparatively liberal in be- 
stowing the franchise, especially west of the Alleghan- 
ies, and gradually the older States changed their con- 
stitutions to conform to the new spirit. 

New York tried to compromise by making its senate 
represent property and its lower house persons, but 
this was decided to be unconstitutional. The South 
made slaves do duty for the benefit of their masters 
as both persons and property, five blacks being counted 
as three whites in apportioning representatives in Con- 
gress. This implied that they were a little more than 
half human; but Chief Justice Taney's decision in the 
Dred Scott case that Negroes " had no rights which the 
white man was bound to respect " robbed them of even 
this fractional personality. They continued to be rep- 
resented in Congress on this basis, however, as long as 
slavery lasted. 

Taken all in all, men with brown skins have not fared 
well as to suffrage in the free United States. Negroes 
were enslaved in the South and disfranchised in the 
North after slavery went out of fashion there ; and 
Indians and Mongolians have both been discriminated 
against. Women, on the other hand, were allowed to 
vote in several of the States in the early days, despite 
the restricted suffrage, provided they fulfilled all the 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 431 

conditions of age, religious tests, tax paying, and prop- 
erty holding. In New Jersey this right was granted in 
the constitution of 1776 and exercised by a few enter- 
prising spirits until 1807 when the legislature illegally 
denied it. It was properly a matter for constitutional 
amendment, but the legislature acted on the assumption 
that three women had " repeated," an accusation 
they indignantly denied, claiming that men bribed to 
impersonate them voted first in their own character, 
and returned to the polls again after donning petticoats. 
Not many women seemed to care, however, and when 
a new constitution was made they were ignored. 

With a few exceptions, changes in state constitutions 
were toward greater liberality, and by 1832 seven of 
them, Vermont, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, 
Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, — one in New England, 
three in the South and three in the West, — had al- 
ready reached the point of requiring no property quali- 
fication whatever. Two other New England States, 
Maine and New Hampshire, granted suffrage to any 
man not on the pauper list. The remaining States 
appraised the privilege of voting as worth all the way 
from an estate valued at sixty pounds to merely pay- 
ing a tax, or serving in the militia as an equivalent. 
In North Carolina and New York it cost considerably 
less to vote for a state representative than for a state 
senator. In North Carolina a man might do the 
former if he paid taxes, while to do the latter he must 
own fifty acres of ground ; in New York both were 
rated higher. In Rhode Island at the present day cer- 
tain questions of imposing taxes can be voted on only 
by persons owning $134 in property, but this is prac- 
tically the last vestige of the restriction. 

Jefferson likened our system of government to " the 
planets revolving round their common sun, acting and 



432 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

acted upon according to their respective weights and 
distances," to produce " a beautiful equIHbrlum , . . 
unexartipled but in the planetary system." The Ideal 
of our Government is of course diversity in unity. 
There is no doubt that w^e attained the diversity, for 
up to the time of the Civil War more constitutions had 
been drafted than there were years in our national 
history, — and no two of them alike. Such of these 
variegated instruments as ran the gantlet of approval 
and became laws in their respective States were speed- 
ily supplemented by legislation on every conceivable 
subject, from abolishing primogeniture to keeping 
crows out of cornfields. 

There seemed only one thing with which state con- 
stitutions hesitated to tamper. That was the judiciary 
system. As a rule they let the courts alone, which 
was wise, since the complicated system of state and 
Federal courts was itself a bold experiment. To the 
Federal courts fell the task of reducing the great mass 
of conflicting state regulations to a code that could be 
administered in harmony with the supreme law of the 
land, the Constitution of the United States. They 
proved equal to it, — the first effective bodies of their 
kind in history. 

In addition to all the newly made indigenous laws, 
there was a background of English law that we in- 
herited as we did the English language, and that like 
the English language proved in need of change to 
adapt it to new necessities. Fortunately these vast 
labors did not come upon the judges all at once. A 
faded little diary kept by John Jay, first Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court of the United States, bears witness 
that American law was a matter of slow growth. Fre- 
quent entries in his clear handwriting state that the 
Court adjourned for lack of something to do, — a fact 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 433 

as hard now to believe as that the present great De- 
partment of State began with a secretary and one as- 
sistant, and at the time Madison took charge of it mus- 
tered only nine employees, himself and the colored 
messenger included. 

Once the English mind conceded our right to na- 
tionality, our efforts at self-government were watched 
with interest, even with secret pride. But it took time 
to reach this point. Chief Justice Jay attracted little 
notice as a lawyer in London when sent there on a 
foreign mission. Four or five years later his succes- 
sor, Ellsworth, who appeared in Westminster Hall 
during the progress of a famous trial, drew many 
curious glances. When study of his marked and un- 
familiar features had established the fact that he was 
no red Indian, lawyers of the Crown crowded about 
him to find out how English law bore transplanting. 

The third Chief Justice of the United States, John 
Marshall, could have answered them much better, for 
it was he who established American law upon a firm 
foundation, and in doing so raised his office to its pres- 
ent high place in public esteem. It was not at first 
considered an honor rivaling the Presidency. Both 
Jay and Ellsworth were sent abroad on missions of im- 
portance to fill up their time to advantage; and twice 
during the six years Jay served as Chief Justice, he 
was candidate for governor of New York, resigning 
when successful to assume what he evidently thought 
the higher office. 

John Marshall's great opportunity came to him in 
a threefold manner, — a long term of service, increased 
business before the courts, and a mind peculiarly fitted 
to the task. In constitutional law he has been called 
" master of the Commonsense," and this he used to 
make over English law, by democratic patterns, into 



434 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

workable American form. Appointed by the elder 
Adams almost at the beginning of the century, he re- 
mained Chief Justice thirty-four years, a picturesque, 
as he was an important, national figure. " No one 
who really knows how the national life of the United 
States has developed," says a recent writer, " will dis- 
pute the assertion that no man can be named to whom 
the nation is more indebted for solid and far-reaching 
services." 

Federalist in politics, and wisely conservative in his 
great work, he was democratic in personal behavior to 
a degree that amazed foreigners. A tall man, careless 
in his dress, and seeming to regret his height, there was 
little in his appearance to warrant a second glance, ex- 
cept his brilliant and penetrating eyes. But his de- 
portment could not fail to attract attention. " People 
in Washington don't begin to understand him," a 
Richmond admirer declared. " Why, do you know, I 
have met Marshall carrying his dinner through the 
streets in an open basket! " On the part of a South- 
erner of position such conduct was scarcely credible. 
" Yes, sir. And I have seen that man walking on his 
hands and knees with a straw in his mouth." This 
Nebuchadnezzar performance was not due to temporary 
insanity, but to love of the game of quoits, a favorite 
pastime in the South. In the course of it disputes 
arose that no amount of judicial acumen could settle. 
Mathematics and careful measurement constituted the 
only court of appeal. 

Once a group of elderly gentlemen, coatless and 
engaged in a hotly contested game, was pointed out 
to a French nobleman, a guest of the Barbecue, the 
Richmond Quoit Club, and he was told that it con- 
tained not only the Governor of Virginia, but the Chief 
Justice of the United States, and several judges of the 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 435 

high court of appeals. He was incredulous. Was it 
possible, he asked, that dignitaries of the Government 
could thus " intermingle with private citizens " ? 
When assured that the proof was there before his eyes, 
he exclaimed in rapture that he had never before 
realized the full beauty of a republic. 

This democratic " intermingling " counted for much 
in our national development and for much more in the 
reforms that little by little invaded law and custom. 
" Public discussion," Hart tells us, " is the antiseptic 
of politics." It was well that legislators who made 
the laws, and judges who administered them, should 
hear at first hand from humbler private citizens who 
were likely to feel the weight of them. In every such 
group lawyers and farmers were sure to be well repre- 
sented, the wide term farmer including the owner of 
broad acres as well as the poor who made a scanty 
living from the soil. Agriculturists formed by far the 
greatest part of the population. Agriculture, the law 
and the ministry were the three callings then in good 
and regular standing in the United States. Ministers 
were a small class with a large but visibly decreasing in- 
fluence. The lawyers were by training and disposition 
best fitted to take an active part in politics, the absorb- 
ing national concern. Often they were both lawyers 
and farmers, for they were not necessarily dwellers in 
towns. The many spots of sparse population marked 
" Court House " on Virginia maps, and the many sub- 
stantial New England homes with small but equally 
substantial " offices " in the same garden enclosure, 
testify to that. When we read that an ambitious youth 
entered the law office of So and So, it does not follow 
that he forsook green fields or lost touch with the 
people who tilled them. It probably meant that he 
left an elm-shaded village street where he was born 



436 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

for another under whose trees the man of the region 
who was best educated and most bountifully endowed 
with brains happened to dwell. When the country- 
side came to this local celebrity for advice it might find 
him getting in his hay if a Northerner, or watching 
his slaves in the field if a Southerner. Or he might be 
preparing a case for court, or away at the state capital 
making laws. Such were often the phases of a many- 
sided career. 

There were merchants, of course, and a few phy- 
sicians and other professional men; but it was a broad- 
minded father who encouraged his son to adopt any 
except one of the three professions. If he became a 
preacher his future salvation was assured, however 
poor he might remain in this world's goods. If a 
farmer, he could probably continue an honest man and 
raise turnips and potatoes to feed his family and stock. 
If he showed an aptitude for exercising his mind out- 
side of theology, a lawyer's training was the thing for 
him, useful alike in legislative halls, on the bench, or 
in efforts to break laws already in force. 

One of our English visitors asserted that " the very 
first object of the Americans after a law is passed is 
to find out how they can evade it." This was scarcely 
fair; but in one sense it was more flattering than de- 
rogatory. There was room for improvement along 
many lines, law not the least among them, in spite of 
many statutes and the guiding influence of patriots like 
John Marshall. Broadening suffrage and diffused edu- 
cation, friendly quoit playing and lively political argu- 
ment, all had their part in softening rigors that now 
seem to us barbarous, and the half century witnessed 
the amelioration of many a crying abuse. Criminal as 
well as constitutional law underwent a decided change. 

All the horrid prison accessories of stocks, pillory, 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 437 

whipping-post, ducking stool, treadmill, shears, and 
branding iron continued in evidence down to the 
Revolution and even later, and laws had hardly been 
changed since, though various grotesque penalties had 
become a dead letter through sheer inability to obtain 
a conviction. As late as 1830 branding, ear cropping, 
exposure on the gallows with a halter around the neck, 
flogging, the wearing of scarlet letters, and the like 
could be found upon the statute books. 

Severe as these old laws now seem, it must not be 
forgotten that America had been progressive compared 
with the rest of the world. William Penn sent a code 
to England so humane that Queen Anne and her coun- 
selors would have none of it; and Pennsylvania, lead- 
ing the colonies in such matters, afterwards led the 
States when her revised code of 1794 inaugurated 
what proved to be the beginning of a prison system for 
the United States, Other States copied more or less 
of it, the bad as well as the better elements. 

In some States white convicts were practically sold 
into slavery like Negroes, their services being auctioned 
off to the highest bidder. The jails were places of 
horror and the details of prison management too re- 
volting to read. The death rate within them was 
shockingly high. There was no attendance on the 
sick, no clothing provided for the needy. Decency 
was not to be found, and comparative degrees of 
misery depended solely on the compassion or brutality 
of the jailer in charge. The worst prison of all, pos- 
sibly, was Newgate of evil memory, near Granby, Con- 
necticut, an underground hades in an abandoned cop- 
per mine, whose forlorn and rotting captives were 
reached only by means of a ladder down a seventy- 
foot shaft. 

The people of those days appear to have been 



438 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

strangely callous and absurdly sensitive at the same 
time. With political ideals rarely equaled in history, 
they were oddly indifferent to human misery, though 
their nerves vibrated in indignant protest at things that 
to-day seem harmless enough, or mere matters of taste, 
like a dance tune on the Sabbath or a statue undraped. 
Perhaps it is an evidence of their largeness of view 
that they worked first for great political reforms, and 
were content to let individuals struggle along as best 
they might until these were attained. But to us who 
enjoy the fruit of their labors and have not yet suc- 
ceeded in bringing to pass lesser reforms for which 
common sense clamors aloud, their code of manners 
and morals seems warped, to say the least. 

It became evident that change of some sort was im- 
perative, for in spite of many and strict laws and a 
long list of capital offenses, the number of criminals 
increased alarmingly. Highway robbery, though pun- 
ishable with death, was so common that it might be 
called a fashionable occupation. Robbing the United 
States mails was a crime of crimes, yet the United 
States attorney at Philadelphia averred that in no 
'"^^ ^country on the planet was the mail exposed to such 
"danger. Some critics wished to return to old and 
even harsher laws. Others contended that repressive 
measures had definitely failed of their purpose. Still 
others advocated establishing a Botany Bay at the 
mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon, where male- 
factors could be transported to work out their own 
destruction. 

The hard times of 1816-17 at once increased the 
troubles and brought a season of enforced and chas- 
tening meditation that led to systematic inquiry into 
their cause. This disclosed how large a proportion of 
city dwellers depended upon charity. In New York 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 439 

it was one seventh. One reason for the many infrac- 
tions of order appeared to be that city government 
wsls still attempted by methods that had been adequate 
enough when introduced, but were now utterly out- 
grown. Drink, lotteries, pawnbrokers, and charitable 
institutions were named as four chief causes of dis- 
tress. It seemed unkind to class charitable institutions 
with the evils they were designed to relieve, but, as 
Lafayette's gift of thistle seed amply proves injudi- 
cious giving is itself almost a crime. Philadelphia, 
foremost in charity as it had been in prison reform, 
was a veritable paradise for beggary. 

Much of the iniquity of life in our seaboard cities 
was traced and solemnly laid to the national partiality 
to oysters, which furnishes another illustration of the 
fact that the difference between a blessing and a curse 
is after all only in degree. 

The oyster boat at the town wharves had been fol- 
lowed by the oyster man who drove about in his cart, 
and wheelbarrow men who sold the luscious bivalve 
upon the street corners. One of these had the enter- 
prise to set up business in a cellar and reaped such 
success that oyster cellars grew to be almost as numer- 
ous as tippling houses and as much of a menace. They 
provided other things besides oysters and rapidly be- 
came the club houses of idle and vicious youth, where 
gambling and imbibing all sorts of moral and physical 
poison went on. Scarcely less demoralizing were the 
second-hand shops in which a business of selling stolen 
goods and other kinds of illicit trade was pursued. 

But chief of the causes of distress in town and coun- 
try was intemperance. " The great evil still is drunk- 
enness " is a sentence to be found in almost every 
book written about America, although occasionally a 
frank Englishman would add that he saw less outward 



440 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

signs of it in several months' residence than in a single 
walk from Charing Cross to Cornhill. It affected 
all classes and brought to each its own punishment. 
Even Clay's great talents did not exempt him from 
inexorable law. Although esteemed not less in so- 
ciety because he gave way to this weakness, and pos- 
sibly even helped by it politically with those who felt 
closer akin to a man tempted like themselves, the sins 
of the father were visited very heavily upon his chil- 
dren. One of his sons was insane and another hope- 
lessly dissipated. 

Citizens who had an uncomfortable turn for statis- 
tics estimated that more money was annually spent for 
drink in the United States than for religion and edu- 
cation combined. It was an old-accepted habit that 
awakening social conscience was just beginning to 
recognize as an evil that might be combated. Spirits 
had been part of the daily ration in the harvest field 
and in the army. Drink flowed like water on militia 
training days and rum had been served to horses as 
well as to laborers in that " most diabolical " work of 
road building. Stimulants were supplied at funerals 
as a matter of course, and decanters appeared unbidden 
and without extra charge on the tables of inn and 
steamboat. As late as the time of Lafayette's visit 
the militiamen who were sent out to meet him at Bos- 
ton's city line were served while waiting his coming, 
with bread and cheese and free punch. This use of 
the town's money was deemed perfectly proper, though 
as one who recorded it adds, a proposal to furnish free 
school books to the city's children would have called 
forth amazed denunciation. 

Temperance societies had been a feature of that 
semi-religious period of organization about the time 
of the War of 1812. They were not confined to white 




JOHN C. FREMONT 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 441 

men. One of the earliest and most successful owed 
its existence to a Miami chief, named Little Turtle, 
and Tecumseh and his brother the Prophet set an ex- 
cellent example to their white neighbors in their vil- 
lage of Tippecanoe. Some of the societies were most 
temperate in their pledges. One organized near Sara- 
toga in 1808 exacted a pledge not to drink except at 
public dinners. The members of another, formed a 
year after Lafayette's tardiness gave Boston militia- 
men their free punch, agreed not to consume more 
than a pint of applejack daily, a quart having been the 
previous limit. Temperance was a new fashion; but 
it grew surely if slowly. By 1836 public opinion had 
so far changed that total abstinence was advocated. 
Four years later the far-reaching " Washingtonian " 
movement was started at Baltimore. But to diagnose 
intemperance as a disease was a much later develop- 
ment, and we had no inebriate asylums before the one 
established near Binghamton, New York, in 1858. 

In the early part of the century marked intemperance 
and not a little blasphemy had gone hand in hand with 
strict Sabbath observance. Public gambling houses 
had been regarded as legitimate business enterprises. 
Lotteries flourished and had the approval of the best 
elements in the community as a means of raising funds 
to build churches and endow colleges and also to cancel 
government debts. John Adams had sanctioned such 
an undertaking to pay off Holland's claims against the 
United States. Not only lotteries but lottery insur- 
ance flourished. Although some of the States had 
scarcely been called upon to grant a divorce, it might 
have been better for the peace of mind of wives and 
the morals of the whole community had the " practice 
of unmarrying " been a little more common and laws 
on the subject better defined. Illegitimate births were 



442 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

not uncommon and certain forms of loose living were 
leniently judged. 

A widespread dread of hospitals prevailed, which 
was not strange, considering their quahty. They were 
for the indigent or the sick and friendless stranger. 
No well-to-do patient was to be found in them. The 
Pennsylvania Hospital, one of the earliest, had been 
built partly to care for the insane. This class, to the 
shame of society, was treated little better than crimi- 
nals. Hospitals received such patients without en- 
thusiasm, looked after them in a way more barbarous 
than humane, and if they became too violent sent 
them on to prison. Dr. Rush's " tranquillizing chair," 
in which a patient could be strapped so that he was un- 
able to move a muscle, had been an example of what 
the best and most benevolent did for these unfortunates 
in the early days. They were still the victims not only 
of disease, but of ignorance and stupidity. Gradually, 
however, manners and morals and philanthropy were 
being measured by a new standard. 

With the change in the point of view children came 
to be regarded in a new light, as a class that needed 
special safeguarding. It was recognized as monstrous 
that drink should be sold by the pennyworth to mere 
babies of five years, or that orphans and such small 
unfortunates as became public charges should be placed 
in almshouses sheltering derelicts of all ages and every 
degree of infirmity. The manifest injustice of bring- 
ing up children in such company led to the estab- 
lishment of orphan asylums. The very first banding 
together of the women of New York for charity was 
for the relief of widows and small children. This 
developed into an Orphan Asylum Society to which the 
legislature made a grant of $500, and in so doing com- 
mitted the State to its responsibility in educating such 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 443 

waifs. Reformatories were inaugurated soon after, 
where useful trades could be taught boys who were less 
criminal than idle, but were likely to become criminals 
if left to the tender mercies of jail wardens. Unsatis- 
factory as such institutions for wholesale treatment of 
the young have since proved, they were an immense 
advance over what had gone before. The systematic 
education of defective children came in its turn, 
partly as a result of this movement, partly through 
the quickening influence of Horace Mann in his crusade 
for better schools. 

The first school for blind children was founded in 
New York in 1831. Dr. Gallaudet's school for deaf 
mutes was opened in Hartford as early as 18 17. That 
the Federal Government took a hand in the schooling 
of such children was due to a sorry little band taken 
to Washington for exhibition by " an adventurer " in 
1844. The impression got abroad that he maltreated 
them, and it was evident that though he expressed a 
desire to found a school, and asked leading citizens 
for funds, he proposed to account to no one. All but 
five of the children were returned to their parents. 
These being foreigners were absolutely at the mercy 
of chance. Their helplessness appealed to Amos 
Kendall, Andrew Jackson's " twilight " friend and 
amanuensis. He had them bound out to him in order 
to give him legal authority over them, and later gave 
for their use the property that has since grown into 
the government college at Kendall Green. 

One of the greatest reforms of the period was the 
abolition of imprisonment for debt practised in Amer- 
ica ever since the days when Georgia was a penal 
colony of the Crown. Originally it had been possible 
to cast a man into jail for failure to pay the smallest 
sum, even one cent, and the state of such a prisoner 



444 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

was worse in some ways than that of a common male- 
factor, for the latter was at least entitled to prison 
fare, such as it might be. The debtor, on the contrary, 
had been forced to provide his own food and fuel and 
covering, and his indebtedness went on increasing the 
longer he stayed in jail, where he was liable to remain 
until his creditor's heart melted or he was released by 
death, unless meanwhile he was fed by some humane 
society. The law had been so amended that a small 
provision for food and blankets was made at the ex- 
pense of the creditor, whose refusal to pay resulted in 
the discharge of the prisoner. Some of the States 
I also fixed a minimum sum for which a man could be 
sent to jail. New Hampshire, one of the earliest to 
do so, made it $13.33. A few States exempted women 
and two or three exempted soldiers of the Revolution. 
Constitutions of the newer States usually contained a 
provision that no citizen willing to give up his estate 
to his creditors should be so imprisoned. 

If a sufficiently large bond was furnished, a debtor 
might reside within certain specified limits outside the 
prison, and in the cities there were large colonies of 
such persons living in dramatic and sometimes pictur- 
esque discomfort. In spite of all these changes 
debtor's laws were harsh and unjust. This last pro- 
vision contained in itself obvious opportunities for ex- 
tortion, which were not neglected. It was estimated 
during Jackson's administration that seven or eight 
thousand persons were sent to jail annually for debt, 
most of them for very trifling sums. The hard times 
of Van Buren's administration would have increased 
their number enormously, had not public indignation 
already risen to such a point that the practice had to 
stop. It was an issue that the Workingmen's party 
justly and very cleverly made its own. New York, 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 445 

the first State to fall in line, abolished imprisonment 
for debt in 1830. Three years later Congress went to 
the fullest extent it could by passing an act that for- 
bade imprisonment for debt under process from Federal 
courts. It really went farther than this, for by ex- 
ample and influence it hastened action in the various 
States. 

Richard M. Johnson of Tennessee, afterwards Vice- 
President of the United States, was especially diligent 
in urging Congress to pass this law. He was ambitious 
and probably saw in the measure both justice and 
policy. At any rate the career of this gentleman em- 
phasizes the recurring thought that Providence uses 
the tools that come to hand without being over par- 
ticular as to their quality. He was not above " politi- 
cating," to use a term current in the Middle West half 
a century ago ; that is, making a trade of politics ; for in 
the early pages of Amos Kendall's autobiography we 
find the two of them engaged in a post office transaction 
hard to distinguish from plain buying and selling. In 
the popular mind Johnson was personally credited with 
the death of Tecumseh, with its lurid details, and much 
lauded for it. On the whole, he was an honorable man 
according to the standards of his time and locality, 
and this effort of his to abolish imprisonment for debt 
ought to go far toward balancing, if it does not entirely 
blot out that post office deal, on the books of the Re- 
cording Angel. 

The same may be said of all the efforts at reform 
and of most of the men engaged in them. Good and 
bad and indifferent worked together and produced 
good in the long run. Not any section or group of 
individuals had a monopoly of virtue. The States 
that were foremost in establishing free schools, or 
those earliest to adopt manhood suffrage, were cer- 



446 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tainly not the first to respond to all such impulses. 
Pennsylvania, a leader in philanthropy, was one of the 
States where children suffered most from factory labor 
after machines made the work of small hands and 
bodies profitable. 

All that can be claimed is that the trend was toward 
a sane and courageous study of sore spots in our civi- 
lization and an effort to treat them as a physician 
treats disease, rather than as superstition treats fetiches. 
With absolutely the same ends in view that have been 
the goal of governments and individuals since the be- 
ginning, religion and law and custom emerged from 
their old attitude of coercion to try measures a little 
more in harmony with the Golden Rule. 

There was decided gain in many directions and a 
falling back in others. Great advance was made in 
laws governing labor, in the care of dependent chil- 
dren, in sobriety. Extradition treaties were entered 
into between the United States and other nations. 
Prison conditions were improved and penal laws so 
changed that they were no longer too drastic to be en- 
forced. There was much less ferocity in the manner 
of inflicting punishments. Stocks and branding irons 
were banished to museums. Public executions became 
things of the past. 

And if in some cases, like the grudging admission 
that married women have property rights, the small 
gain came as much through fear on the part of frugal 
fathers of what sons-in-law might do with their hard- 
earned wealth, as through a sense of justice or the 
efforts of the women themselves, that is simply in line 
with the humorous way things seem to go in this queer 
old world. 

Indeed, the study of half-hearted movements for re- 
form in some quarters and earnest but unwise efforts in 



SUFFRAGE AND REFORM 447 

others, leads to the moral reflections that tl\e growth 
and fostering of public sentiment in this country has 
been like the building of coral insects, — a work of 
many poor worms, but tending always upward. 



,^. ^' CHAPTER XXI 

NEWS AND BOOKS 

AMERICA and the art of printing came into 
being at the same time. It would be tortur- 
ing coincidence to dwell unduly upon this, but 
the temptation is strong to moralize on the part the 
one discovery played in developing the other. No 
great country has come under the thrall of the printed 
word so completely as the United States ; and no great 
country was ever made in such a hurry. 

Statesmen early saw what a weapon printing put 
into their hands. Political battles before and after 
and during the Revolution were waged with pamphlet 
and press, Jefferson's very first message to Congress 
recommended abolishing postage on newspapers " to 
facilitate the progress of information " ; and elsewhere 
he declared that if he had to choose between a Govern- 
ment without newspapers and newspapers without a 
Government, he would unhesitatingly favor the latter. 
The effectiveness of these purveyors of opinion grew 
with the years until, when Jackson's strong hold on 
public imagination was strongest, they were almost an 
instrument of torture in the hands of his political 
lieutenants. 

Such use forced newspapers into a prominence far 
ahead of national development in other fields of letters. 
In literature we were children of Europe, respectful but 
backward. In material things we were children of 

448 



NEWS AND BOOKS 449 

Europe, poor but resourceful. In politics we were 
young giants, forging ahead in ways that were not the 
ways of our fathers. 

De Tocqueville described the American pioneer in- 
vading his wilderness " armed with the Bible, an axe, 
and a file of newspapers." The picture was not far- 
fetched; for the newspaper followed him to the 
farthest clearing. Travelers told of riding " with the 
mail " by day and by night along roads scarcely marked 
out in the forest, the driver throwing papers recklessly 
right and left where there was no sign of habitation. 
Asked if the bears took an interest in politics, he ex- 
plained that there was a settler somewhere in the neigh- 
hood and that he or his children were usually waiting. 
" But when I don't find them ready I throw the paper 
under a tree ; and I warrant you they '11 look sharp 
enough to find it; they're always curious of news in 
these wild parts." 

Sometimes the stages themselves served as vehicles 
of information, bounding along with bands of white 
muslin fastened around their tops that proclaimed some 
startling message in letters large enough for all who 
saw to read. It was thus the news of peace went out 
from Philadelphia after the War of 18 12. 

There seem to be national types in journalism just 
as there are national peculiarities in noses, — or con- 
sciences. Editorials, for example, born in France at 
the time Marat's Ami dii Peuple added to the frenzy 
of the French Revolution, took root only after they 
crossed the Channel, and found congenial soil in the 
English press. Even in times of political tragedy 
French papers have managed to give more space to 
art and drama and literature than we, with our British 
inheritance, think quite seemly. Our national desire 
has always been to print news; even if next day we 



450 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

had to make news by confessing that the news of the 
day before was all a mistake. 

And next to news, as a specialty of American jour- 
nals, has come advertising, used and paid for by our 
impatient countrymen with lavish recklessness. Its 
tone has changed but never its purpose. Back in 1704 
the " Boston News Letter," the second venture of its 
kind on this continent, set forth in language of ex- 
treme and injured dignity the " loss " of two anvils 
weighing over a hundred pounds each, with the request 
that " whosoever had taken them up " return them and 
receive a reward. Advertisements soon ceased to be 
so polite, but they have never ceased to be interesting 
reading. Merchants have described their wares with 
beguiling efifect. Doctors have advertised " a large 
stock of genuine medicines." Lotteries have printed 
seductive lists of prizes which, in what one of our 
foreign visitors called the " Despotic States," might 
include a human being or two. Notices of runaway 
slaves have emphasized the tragic cruelty of that sys- 
tem. Preliminaries to the duel have been printed in 
" cards " denouncing some worthy citizen as a coward 
and worse. The page of progress has been illumi- 
nated with advertisements of the " locomotive engine " 
scheduled to leave daily with a train of cars " when 
the weather is fair." And many a pathetic notice has 
been inserted asking for tidings of family or friends 
captured by the Indians. 

Though news has been the constant desire of our 
press it was satisfied at first but slowly. In the real 
colonial period of American newspapers, which ended 
long before our colonial relations with England ceased, 
editors had to obey orders or go to prison. Therefore 
they printed little real news and fewer real opinions. 



NEWS AND BOOKS 451 

There came a time of rebellion when they went to 
prison rather than obey orders, even though their busi- 
ness suffered, and it would have paid them well had it 
been possible to follow an oriental custom and engage 
a " prison editor " for the express purpose of going 
to jail. After the Revolution came the party press, 
a result of rule by the majority. And after that the 
independent press, outgrowth of railroads and tele- 
graphs, with such wide facilities for gathering news 
that no party could control it. 

About forty papers weathered the Revolution and 
the years of uncertainty following it. With a more 
stable form of government they began to increase, 
and by the middle of the century there was scarcely 
a hamlet in the North or West that did not publish 
its own little weekly sheet and receive the larger jour- 
nals that printed the proceedings of Congress. In the 
Southern States local papers were less plentiful, for 
the conditions that retarded free schools worked 
equally against an untrammeled press. It was not a 
thriving speculation in districts where law and pub- 
lic opinion alike demanded silence on one engrossing 
topic. 

Daily papers early became common, but while most of 
the newspapers were still weeklies and semi-weeklies, 
it was etiquette in towns large enough to support several 
to have them issued on successive days, giving the com- 
munity all the benefits of a daily press and insuring a 
better sale for each in turn. In those early papers long 
letters signed by Veritas and other gentlemen with 
borrowed Latin names occupied much space. Crime 
was consigned to delicate oblivion, or if mentioned at 
all was treated in the most guarded manner. Local 
departments received scant attention and there was 



452 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

almost nothing in the way of pungent paragraphs. On 
the other hand the editorial vocabulary was lurid in the 
extreme. 

" The Americans are certainly a calm, rational, civil, 
and well-behaved people, not given to quarrel, or to 
call each other names," wrote one of our visitors in 
1820. " Yet, if you were to look at their newspapers, 
you would think them a parcel of Hessian soldiers. An 
unrestricted press appears to be the safety-valve of 
their free Constitution. . . . Were a foreigner im- 
mediately upon landing to take up a newspaper (espe- 
cially if he should chance to land just before an elec- 
tion), he might suppose that the whole political ma- 
chine was about to fall to pieces and that he had 
just come in time to be crushed in its ruins. But if 
he should not look at a newspaper he might walk 
through the streets on the very day of election and 
never find out that it was going on, unless, indeed, it 
should happen to him, as it happened to me, to see a 
crowd collected round a pole surmounted by a cap 
of liberty, and men walking in at one door of a house 
and walking out at another. Should he then ask a 
friend hurrying past him, ' What is going on there ? ' 
he may receive for an answer, ' The election of repre- 
sentatives. Walk on. I am just going to give in my 
vote, and I will overtake you." 

Several causes worked together to bring about a 
change from this early journalistic style. One was the 
growth of the new West, with its earnestness overlaid 
by a casual offhand manner. Another was a dawning 
national sense of literary style. A third was the 
quickened pace of life propelled by steam. A fourth 
was the moral issue that was already taking hold on 
men's minds. With a great question like slavery 
looming in the background, ' traitor ' and ' beast ' 



NEWS AND BOOKS 453 

seemed extravagent terms to apply to fellow citizens 
who differed only about the tariff or who would make 
the best candidate for the legislature. 

Extravagant language of another sort flourished, 
being part of the exuberant young country's process 
of growing up, but it provoked little notice beyond 
wonder and mirth. It had its root in country printing 
offices, where the time hung heavy and editors were 
filled with a praiseworthy desire to " liven up the 
town." Sometimes their imaginations soared to really 
poetic heights. One masterpiece of this kind described 
a totally empty hack drawing up before the office of 
a rival paper, the carriage door opening and the editor 
of that damnably adjectived journal slipping furtively 
from it to his sanctum. 

Even in 1830 the pace set for printing news was 
slow enough. Though it had been the custom for 
many years to print long reports of congressional 
speeches, the country waited day after day for a 
transcript of the great debate between Webster and 
Hayne. It did not see the light of print in Wash- 
ington journals for two weeks, and March came in 
before it could be read in Boston, though Hayne's 
speech was delivered on the 25th of January. But 
there was impatience at the delay and the newspapers 
felt it necessary to apologize. " We do not know 
what has become of Mr. Hayne's and Mr. Webster's 
speeches," the " Philadelphia Gazette " admitted on 
February 15. 

As causes and reforms became fashionable, they 
began to have papers devoted to their own ends. A 
paper printing religious news and no other made its 
appearance soon after our second war with England. 
This was not only a novelty but an inspiration, and 
several good Americans disputed the honor of thinking 



454 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

of it first. The " Boston Recorder," claimed by two 
citizens as being a paper of their own invention, de- 
veloped within itself another novelty destined to great 
growth, — a children's department which expanded in 
time into the " Youth's Companion." Papers printing 
secular news on Sunday made their appearance about 
1825. The first one, strange to say, was edited by a 
theological student, and, as might have been expected, 
was denounced as a through ticket to perdition. 

The work of " Our Special Correspondent " at 
Washington and elsewhere scored a decided advance 
in 1830, through the imitative cleverness of James 
Gordon Bennett. Browsing one day in the Congres- 
sional Library he came upon the witty letters of Horace 
Walpole, describing court happenings in the reign of 
George II, and forthwith decided to apply the same 
method to the " court of John Q. Adams." Published 
anonymously, these letters of his made a sensation 
and were widely copied, being infinitely more amus- 
ing than the effusions of Veritas, or the unskilful 
marshaling of political facts sent back by the average 
congressman to his home paper. 

Somewhat later a woman boldly invaded the field 
of journalism in Washington, where she established 
the " Huntress," and let fly barbed arrows in all direc- 
tions. She was aggressive and unprepossessing, not 
very clever, and she wore a man's manner as well as 
a man's hat and umbrella. John Quincy Adams re- 
ferred to her as " that virago errant," and one of her 
own calling said she was a terror rather than a tempta- 
tion. Though neither as woman nor editor of a type 
to make feminine invasion of journalism popular, she 
added one more complication to its field. Another de- 
veloped in a new way of selling papers. Up to 1833 
they could be had only by subscription, with possibly 



NEWS AND BOOKS 455 

a few extra copies to be bought at the printing house. 
Then suddenly they appeared on the newstands and in 
the arms of ubiquitous urchins forever dodging under 
foot. This invasion of the street was the crowning 
piece of strategy of the party press, and took place soon 
after Jackson and Van Buren pooled their useful 
knowledge of politics and human nature. Almost in- 
stantly the journals that had grown arrogant under the 
fostering care of politics and were now beginning to 
prove ungrateful, found themselves obliged to fight 
for their lives against a flock of lesser papers, partizan 
in tone, that were sold upon the streets for half their 
cost. 

With the founding of the independent press, led by 
the " New York Herald," all the elements of modern 
journalism were in the field, at least in embryo. There 
were news boats and news expresses, both well-defined 
attempts at systematic news gathering. The sema- 
phoric telegraph displayed its signals, and extras burst 
like bombs upon a peaceful town. Bennett, now editor 
of the " Herald," set a wild pace of three editions, 
morning, evening, and weekly; and, having injected 
wit into special correspondence, began printing finan- 
cial articles that were the despair of the other papers. 

All this induced rivalry and hustling, and by the 
time Dickens reached New York Harbor in 1842, 
American reporters had acquired something of their 
later agility, and leaped gaily aboard the vessel as he 
neared shore, to get his impressions of America be- 
fore he set foot upon its soil. These enterprising 
young men discovered too that they could wield power 
by concerted action, and did not scruple to do so on 
occasion, to avenge insults fancied or real. 

When the magnetic telegraph was perfected, it 
opened up undreamed possibilities in news gathering; 



456 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

and two years after Morse demonstrated its practi- 
cability, Richard Hoe's invention of the " lightning " 
rotary press added thousands to the number of news- 
papers it was possible to print in an hour. This again 
increased the pace, the competition, and the appetite 
for news. Alliance, both for profit and defense, fol- 
lowed, and in 1848 seven journals of New York City 
made an agreement with each other and the owners of 
telegraph patents for a news service favorable to them, 
which they would consent to sell to other newspapers 
on condition that these supply to the association special 
news in their own neighborhoods. This was the be- 
ginning of the Associated Press, which has expanded 
and changed and suffered the ups and downs of modern 
business, and is now incorporated as a " gentleman's " 
fish and game club under the laws of New Jersey. 

Not content with being able to telegraph on land, 
invention aspired to telegraph under the sea, a proj- 
ect encouraged and hoped for by the press. English 
and American enterprise and English and American 
capital worked eight years to accomplish the marvel. 
Time and again ships with endless lengths of cable, 
and tenders laden with necessary supplies, set fbrth 
from both shores to meet in midocean, splice their 
respective portions, and cautiously begin the work of 
paying out as they sailed homeward. Time and again 
the cable parted and the work was lost; but at length 
in 1858 words of congratulation flashed between the 
English Queen and the white-haired President Bu- 
chanan, and New York went wild in an ovation to Cy- 
rus Field, the American millionaire who had made our 
part of the venture possible, and to the officers of the 
ship that had carried the American half of the cable. 
But almost before their shouts had ended, the cable 
parted again and even the hopeful press was cast down. 




b;2:5^ 



AVILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



NEWS AND BOOKS 457 

The " Tribune," not always hopeful, registered its 
fear that the project must be given up "as a complete 
failure." It required eight more years to prove the 
"Tribune" wrong; but when the two hemispheres 
were at last united, American journalism spread its 
activities and embraced the whole world in its tentacles 
for news getting and news telling. 

The connection between our newspapers and the 
growth of American literary activity in other fields 
has been more intimate than we are wont to remember. 
From Franklin down, few of the writers whose names 
endure escaped editorship sooner or later. 

We have Franklin's word for it that at the time he 
established himself in Philadelphia there was not a 
good bookstore south of Boston, and that " those who 
loved reading had to send for their books to England." 
Those who loved writing imported their ideas from the 
same source for many years after. The significant 
fact is that they did import them, and that books were 
written and poems composed upon American soil al- 
most from the landing of the first settler, under condi- 
tions most unfavorable to such expression. These 
works were serious and the public they reached was 
small. It wished to be instructed and did not expect 
to be amused, which, considering the output, was a 
mercy, like tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. 

Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, after American writers were fairly numerous 
and some of them had won recognition from British 
critics (with proper reservations, of course), they 
wrote in an English way and usually upon English 
themes. There were a few literary rebels, like Noah 
Webster, who miscalled that " blue-backed speller " 
out of which millions of little Americans learned their 
a-b abs and all they ever knew about the science of 



458 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

words, " The first part of a Grammatical Institute of 
the EngHsh language." He meant the American 
language, and in the Grammar which formed a more 
advanced part of the same Institute, held that it was 
correct to say " you was " because " the practice is 
universal except among men who learn the language 
out of books." He chose the broad democratic basis 
of popular support. It was no passing enthusiasm 
with him but a lifelong conviction upheld in the crown- 
ing work of his life, the great dictionary published in 
1828, which championed American spelling and illus- 
trated its definitions by examples from American au- 
thors. His classmate, Joel Barlow, attempted the 
same service for American poetry in the Columbiad, 
which was to be a New- World Iliad ; but such rebels 
could be counted on one hand. Even Charles Brock- 
den Brown, commonly named as the first of our novel- 
ists, was English in manner and theme, though he set 
a lively American pace by publishing his seven novels 
in four years, besides founding a magazine, of which 
he wrote most of the contents, and having meanwhile 
the best reasons to consider himself an invalid. 

During the years of political revolt and the years 
after it, while we were yet unimaginatively English in 
many ways, and our writers were conscientiously copy- 
ing English masterpieces and thinking English literary 
thoughts, American babies were being born who were 
to change all that. Washington Irving, who sounded 
the first note ; Richard H. Dana ; Fenimore Cooper, the 
first to produce a truly American novel ; Fitz Greene 
Halleck; James Gordon Bennett, responsible for so 
much that is American in our press ; and William Cul- 
len Bryant, the first poet his country could not easily 
do without, were all born between the end of the Revo- 
lution and the beginning of the new century; while 



NEWS AND BOOKS 459 

Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier, Holmes, 
Long-fellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horace Greeley, 
and that child of actors and misfortune, Edgar Allan 
Poe, were born before the War of 181 2; and almost 
every year since has seen the birth of some American 
destined to literary fame on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Although Irving published Diedrich Knickerbocker's 
immortal work in 1809, and only two years after 
Diedrich made his bow to the world, a boy of seven- 
teen in Massachusetts wrote " Thanatopsis," our dis- 
tinctively American literary life may be said to have 
begun at the time that so many other great changes 
took place in the United States, soon after the close 
of the War of 181 2. The nation in this, as in politi- 
cal and material ways, was waking to consciousness of 
its power. 

Young Bryant left his remarkable poem lying in a 
drawer without troubling to show it to any one. Six 
years later it was found by his astonished father and 
sent without the author's knowledge to the " North 
American Review." Cooper's " Spy " published in 
1 82 1 was doubly a surprise, because his novel of the 
previous year had been so English in subject and 
treatment that British reviewers assumed as a matter 
of course he must be one of themselves. Groups of 
authors interested in the development of an American 
literature appeared in Boston, Philadelphia, and New 
York; and a feeling for the value of words more 
marked than had as yet been shown manifested itself 
in every parsonage and law office and printing estab- 
lishment in the land. The new style in public speak- 
ing was one result ; a distinct improvement in the qual- 
ity of newspapers was another. 

Quarterlies and monthlies had early been established 
and had kept pace with newspapers. In those half- 



46o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

way houses between books and the daily press new 
writers found opportunity to try their art; and the 
number of American classics, from " Thanatopsis " 
to " Uncle Tom's Cabin," first printed in magazine or 
newspaper, induces the belief that the periodical press 
has in truth been the fostering guardian, if not the 
real parent, of a distinctively American literature. 

The increasing number of journals and magazines 
provided many editorial chairs to be filled; and in a 
country destitute of the mellow atmosphere of scholar- 
ship, where everything was new and almost everybody 
was in a hurry, the responsibilities of editorship sub- 
stituted a craftsman's knowledge of tools for theory, 
and the need for accuracy in the use of those tools 
taught greater respect for form than any amount of 
basking in historic atmosphere would have instilled 
in an American mind. Editing was thus a practical 
and chastening experience, comparable for the author 
to the benefit of stage training for a playwright. 

The work-a-day part of editing also rendered a 
service not to be lightly esteemed. Comment has al- 
ready been made on the number of Americans who 
have gained fame in some other than their ostensible 
calling. Every self-respecting American had a prac- 
tical business. It was a law imposed by the wilderness, 
where it was as binding as the old Levitical code that 
decreed a handicraft for every Jewish child. It had not 
yet been outgrown; and since literature had scarcely 
come to be classed as a profession, all these writers had 
to be something else in " real life," — doctors or law- 
yers or what not. Thoreau made lead pencils, Lowell 
was a lawyer. Poe was trained in the navy. Holmes 
was a physician. The list could be extended indefi- 
nitely; but to realize the universal custom it is only 
necessary to remember how the old soldiers crowded 



NEWS AND BOOKS 461 

around Lafayette and asked, " What do you do for a 
living in your own country? " 

Editorship proved a business obvious enough to ful- 
fil public expectation, tedious enough to satisfy the 
demands of the most exigent conscience, yet congenial 
at bottom to a writer's turn of mind. One may love 
one's business, but the love of a hobby glows with a 
warmer flame. The love of craft reflected back upon 
routine work, and a beneficent circle was established. 
The worthy Dr. Buckingham wrote that the " New 
York Evening Post," edited by a poet named Bryant, 
who might fairly rank with Campbell, the author of 
" Pleasures of Hope " showed its superiority over 
its rivals in " talent, wit, taste, and above all in gentle- 
manly fairness of argument." The reverend gentle- 
man looked askance on Bennett's hustling activity and 
thought the price he charged for advertising good 
English-made lectures grasping to the point of avarice. 

Not all editorial chairs could be filled by authors 
worthy to rank with the perpetrator of the " Pleasures 
of Hope " ; but those of less ability added each his por- 
tion to the growing interest, and contributed many a 
bit of excellent work. Like, for instance, that clever 
" Moon Hoax," purporting to be what Sir John Her- 
schel saw through the " nearly seven tons " lens of his 
telescope at the Cape of Good Hope, but which was 
really what Richard Adams Locke saw in his mind's 
eye through the editorial rooms of the " New York 

un. 

Interest did not exhaust itself in editors' sanctums, 
or in cities east of the Alleghanies. The mails had 
been opened to books as early as 1804 and these fol- 
lowed newspapers westward into lately invaded haunts 
of deer and bear. Not in very great numbers, to be 
sure. Political news was an American necessitv; 



462 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

books were a luxury. But respect for books and for 
those who read them was great. " If a stranger sup- 
posed to understand Latin sojourned in the neighbor- 
hood he was looked upon as a wizard," Lincoln wrote, 
in his fragment of autobiography. And in that fron- 
tier neighborhood where Lincoln grew up, hungering 
for intellectual food, he found books that could 
scarcely have been chosen better with reference to his 
coming needs. 

Love of literature and literary ability manifested 
themselves in the most unlikely places. The mill girls 
of Lowell, recruited from the farm kitchens of New 
England, flowered into authorship in the " Lowell 
Offering," a series of annuals of distinct merit. When 
Vandalia, the early capital of Illinois, was barely ten 
years old it had its Antiquarian and Historical Society, 
whose proceedings were published " from the Black- 
well Press of Vandalia " with as much gravity and 
decorum as though Vandalia had been for centuries a 
seat of learning like Oxford or Leipsic. 

A shoemaker plying his trade in a village on the 
banks of the Susquehanna might have a great love for 
books and know not only some law but enough medi- 
cine to make his presence in the village doubly valuable, 
and work away in his leisure hours when past middle 
age to teach himself the wizard's tongue, Latin. After 
the Erie Canal was opened, a traveling bookstore was 
established on a boat that made several trips a year, and 
did " considerable business " at the towns along the 
way selling chiefly the ancient .authors, medical, reli- 
gious, and law books, with a sprinkling of new novels. 

One could almost believe the enthusiastic Frenchman 
who wrote at the time that newspapers began to be 
sold upon the streets in New York, " everybody is 
literary in America." There was as much truth in his 



NEWS AND BOOKS 463 

rash statement as there had been in Sydney Smith's 
sneer of a decade before, " Who reads an American 
book?" 

" Every one," wrote this Frenchman again, " besides 
a paper from Washington or from some Atlantic town, 
receives that of the village from which he has emi- 
grated. . . . Reviews and magazines, literary journals, 
novelties of every sort, come to us from New York, 
Philadelphia, and England at a moderate price, and a 
month or two after their publication over the Atlantic." 
" I had read, I have no doubt, the last romance of Sir 
Walter Scott before it had reached Vienna." 

Miss Martineau, never backward about asking ques- 
tions, has left a curious note of what she conceived to 
be the relative popularity of British authors in the 
United States. She found Hannah More better 
known than Shakespeare, but admitted that this might 
be an index of religious sentiment and not of literary 
taste. Scott was idolized. She did not need to tell 
us that: the favorite names of stagecoaches and steam- 
boats prove it without her testimony. Miss Edgeworth 
was also a great favorite, but Bulwer was read more 
than either. Byron was scarcely mentioned. You 
could not buy Wordsworth's poems in every shop, but 
she thought they lay " at the heart of the people." 
Our citizens had a bowing acquaintance with Coleridge 
and Lamb ; and she mentioned " Sartor Resartus " as 
perhaps " the first instance of the Americans having 
taken to their hearts an English work which came to 
them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommenda- 
tion, and even absolutely neglected at home." She had 
small opinion of American writers. She thought the 
moral beauty of Miss Sedgwick of a much finer char- 
acter than the bonhomie of Irving; and pronounced 
Cooper's novels to have " a very puny vitality." Bry- 



464 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ant was our one poet, and Bancroft, who had then pub- 
lished his first two volumes, our only historian. 

Our interest in visiting literary celebrities was 
marked. A contemporary has written that with the 
single exception of Lafayette, Miss Martineau herself 
was more feted than any foreigner who had up to that 
time visited us. Her outspoken opinions on slavery 
caused her popularity to wane in some parts of the 
country; and Dickens was never forgiven for his 
" American Notes," but during his stay here enthusi- 
asm knew no bounds. His movements were chronicled 
with a fidelity that the press of his own country would 
have reserved for royalty. Forty dollars were paid for 
tickets to the ball given in his honor in Boston, and an 
unpoetic and envious Philadelphian figured that at the 
current price of hogs those little bits of pasteboard 
represented the equivalent of 40,000 pounds of pork. 

Officials and private citizens vied to do him honor. 
President Tyler entertained him at a reception. 
"What think you?" wrote young Mrs. Tyler, the 
President's daughter-in-law. " He and Washington 
Irving were both speaking to me at the same time! " 
She preferred Irving, who exerted himself to be agree- 
able, while Boz showed plainly that he was bored by 
the crowd surging about him and jumping up and down 
in a desire to get a sight of his short person over the 
heads of taller neighbors. After an hour he retired 
*' and left the unused enthusiasm to Irving." 

The country waited expectant for the book he was 
to write about America, and nineteen hours after a 
copy of it reached New York it had been reprinted and 
was on sale. The New York publishers disposed of 
50,000 copies in two days, and Philadelphia's first con- 
signment of 3000 was exhausted inside of half an hour. 
Anger and astonishment filled the breasts of his 



NEWS AND BOOKS 465 

friendly hosts. What they read seemed like a breach 
of hospitality, — and hurt the more for the truth in his 
criticisms. But resentment of his sharp words never 
materially affected Dickens's popularity in America as 
an author. 

New Orleans was the one city in the United States 
where little attention was paid to reading. Even its 
newspapers were poor, and in 1830 its population of 
60,000 supported only three bookshops, whose stocks 
were made up mainly of French works that merited 
the criticism so unjustly heaped upon Jefferson's 
library. " A collection of books, good, bad, and in- 
different, new, old, and, worthless, in languages which 
many cannot read and most ought not." 

This was what was said of Jefferson's collection 
when he offered it to Congress to replace the one 
burned by the British. It was really the best library 
of its size in the country, but it was suspected of being 
atheistic in tone, and the tirades against it were, like 
Hannah More's popularity, an index of religious feel- 
ing. It was colored by politics, also. Indignant pa- 
triots who disapproved of Jefferson's lack of belief in 
theology and superabundance of faith in the people 
were not sorry to see him on the verge of bankruptcy, 
and they vigorously opposed the purchase. Cyrus 
King said it would " bankrupt the Treasury and dis- 
grace the nation." 

The purchase was made, however, becoming the 
nucleus of the present great Library of Congress. It 
could be regarded with more pride as an index of the 
real literary appreciation of Congress were it not for 
the fact that these books were bought " by the pound " 
so to speak. Jefferson himself suggested an impartial 
method of determining their worth by their size, — ten 
dollars for a folio, six dollars for a quarto, three for 



466 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

an octavo, regardless of subject matter or any mitigat- 
ing circumstances inside them. He may have done 
this in honest simplicity, but one suspects an under- 
current of subtle derision. 

This purchase occurred about the time that the 
" Knickerbocker " group of authors in and near New 
York, Irving and Cooper and Bryant and their fellows, 
were coming into their own. Their most important 
work was done by 1850, and long before the half cen- 
tury struck New England's literary promise had also 
flowered. By that time Longfellow and Whittier had 
been publishing for twenty years and Emerson for ten. 
Hawthorne too had made his rare genius known in 
" Mosses from an Old Manse " and Poe, one of that 
Northern company by accident of birth, had given the 
world his haunting melody and died. 

It is quite right that the poets and philosophers of 
this New England group should hold first place in the 
affections and remembrance of their countrymen, but 
it is pleasant to dwell for a moment on its historians, 
with their record of brotherly courtesy and triumph 
over physical pain. Of the four best known in this 
smaller circle, Prescott labored, as did his fellow his- 
torian Parkman, in a twilight of blindness, unable to use 
his eyes for more than ten minutes at a time, while 
he wrote those vivid pictures of Spanish rule on two 
continents that read Hke brilliant romance and were 
instantly acclaimed and translated into many tongues. 

Parkman did for the history of the French in Can- 
ada what Prescott did for the record of the Spaniards 
in Mexico, though even more cruelly handicapped by 
ill health. Motley's inauspicious debut as a writer 
of romance turned to triumph when he found his in- 
spiration in the history of the Netherlands. Ban- 
croft's theme was the history of his own country. 



NEWS AND BOOKS 467 

Sympathy and courtesy enter into the story in the 
fact that Irving, who meant himself to write a his- 
tory of the conquest of Mexico and had already gath- 
ered material for it, gave up the plan when he heard 
of Prescott's ambition, and sent him his notes. And 
Prescott a few years later passed on the kindness 
to Motley by resigning that part of his scheme which 
would have encroached on the territory Motley had 
chosen for his own. 

On the poets and the philosophers and the fun- 
makers of that large New England company there is 
small need to dwell, for their names and their thoughts 
are a national heritage. But it is significant that in 
a nation endowed with a gay and optimistic impudence, 
and given over in common estimation to pursuit of the 
dollar, the psychological and the spiritual have exer- 
cised the strongest fascination and been accorded the 
highest place. When one thinks of distinctively 
American writers, it is not of those who dealt with 
material subjects, but of the men like Hawthorne and 
Emerson, tuned to a spiritual key. 

The Knickerbocker group had developed purely 
American themes in literary forms of unquestioned 
merit. The mission of the writers of New England 
was to add an ethical and spiritual force to American 
letters. They were of Puritan stock, and they were 
ten years nearer the fiery trial of the Civil War. The 
men who brought about the liberal movement in re- 
ligion that split the churches of that section during 
the first quarter of the century were their intellectual 
forerunners, and an undertone of austerity is to be 
found in the most genial of their writings. Right was 
right to them as inexorably and inevitably as it had 
been in the eyes of their Puritan fathers, though those 
worthies would have felt obliged to consign these de- 



468 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

scendants to perdition for the way in which they ex- 
pressed their behef. 

Some stopped on the brink of unorthodoxy in mere 
Hterature, and covered up their granite sense of truth 
with the flowers of fable and verse. Some carried it 
into the reahns of philosophy. These were the men 
who in spirit dominated all the rest. 

They were exceedingly liberal in being willing to cull 
good from any source, Christian or pagan. They 
were as rigid as their forebears in insisting that every- 
thing they accepted measure up to the high standard 
they set, and like their ancestors they were revolution- 
ary in applying these rules to every-day custom. They 
chose to be led by the inner light wherever it might take 
them. They were, in short, idealists trying to apply 
their system based on the old Platonic doctrine of 
ideas, to the hard and often balky facts of New Eng- 
land village life. And they were withal kindly, im- 
practical gentlemen and ladies whose unconscious 
singleness of purpose and gentle lack of humor moved 
their neighbors to mirth, but toned the entire nation 
for the struggle that lay before it. 

The dreaming Alcott was a target for criticism as 
well as for wonder. Townsfolk might be pardoned 
for thinking his daughter, writing her wholesome 
stories for girls and working hard with hands and 
pen to offset her transcendental father's objection to 
thwarting the business of canker worms, or taking 
other practical steps to help nature feed his flock, the 
better citizen and truer philosopher of the two. They 
might wonder at Thoreau in his hut on Walden Pond, 
living out his theory that " a man is rich in proportion 
to the number of things he can afford to let alone." 
The volume that came from that hut in the woods 
might seem to them a very useless waste of time and 



NEWS AND BOOKS 469 

ink ; but not one of them could help being impressed by 
Emerson. 

Fredrika Bremer, who attended an Alcott " con- 
versazione," wrote that "' both the proposition and the 
conversation were in the clouds," though she made 
ineffectual efforts to focus them on something more 
solid. " Alcott drank water and we drank, — fog," 
she wrote, " but the good Alcott hears an objection 
as if he heard it not." Emerson appeared to her as 
strong and positive as Alcott was vague. He both 
attracted and repelled her. She felt his " ice-alp na- 
ture " to be repulsive and chilling, but she could see 
that this was only one side of him. In Emerson's 
study where the furniture was grave, useful, and com- 
fortable but not beautiful, hung a single picture, a large 
copy in oils of Michael Angelo's Parcse, — like the 
furniture, grave and useful, but not beautiful. The 
great man took her driving, and alighting to get her 
a glass of water from a favorite spring, tied the reins 
to a tree ! Truly a guardian angel as well as the 
Parcse was domesticated in his house, and had the 
upper hand of them. 

Both he and Alcott made their way into the West 
in books and in lecture tours as well. The new coun- 
try showed itself as eager to meet and hear these 
prophets of New England as the East was to behold 
the literary lights of Europe. Cincinnati early had its 
Dorfenville's Hell and similar attractions, but these 
were soon rivaled by lyceum lectures by Emerson and 
Theodore Parker, at a price so low that it cost scarcely 
more to wander with them in realms of philosophy 
than to descend to Avernus. A letter from Emerson 
to Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford, who was arranging 
for such a course of lectures, brings to mind vividly 
the standard of plain living and high thinking then 



470 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

current all over the country. After promising to de- 
liver five lectures Emerson added in a postscript: 

" I observe that you set your course tickets at one 
dollar. You must do what is best in your city, con- 
sulting your usage. But at New York my friends I 
believe convinced themselves that Mr. Horace Greeley 
with whom it had been left, should have made the 
single tickets 50 cents instead of 25. The lecturers 
complained of me as an injurer of the profession." 

Year after year, East and West, the moral note rang 
stronger in the works of these older writers and the 
young men and women who joined their ranks in ever 
increasing numbers ; and when at last all other issues 
merged in the great battle for and against slavery, they 
lifted their voices and some of them gave their lives for 
freedom. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 

FORTUNATELY the number of seers is 
limited, for prophecy is a heady wine. Like 
the character in French comedy who was sur- 
prised to learn that he talked prose without knowing 
it, the average citizen goes about his business un- 
conscious that he has an " aim " or a " tendency," 
much less that he is living it. But studying history 
by cancelation brings to mind that passage in which 
Ruskin speaks of the " awful " lines of a tree, mean- 
ing the lines which tells of its struggle up into the air, — 
the real story of its life. One by one material details 
shrivel like leaves, revealing the vital framework with- 
out which no leaves, perfect or misshapen, could have 
found nourishment. 

The rush toward new lands; the country's wonder- 
ful, increasing wealth during those years of national 
expansion ; its almost indecent haste to reap the benefit 
of new inventions; the hustle of business; the tempta- 
tions and personalities of politics ; the grotesqueness of 
the newly rich, adopting luxury without assimilating 
it; and the bitterness of the poor, envying luxury while 
lacking bread, covered with a dense mantle the old 
principles and ideals that had moved Americans up to 
the time the Constitution was adopted and for twenty- 
five years thereafter. 

While individuals or groups might be heedless, or 
471 



472 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

rascally, or vicious, men in the mass had at heart 
the real good of the community. This was the essence 
of democracy and harked back to the basic idea of 
personal worth and responsibility, — no American 
monopoly, but a human tendency that had an uncom- 
mon chance to develop on our soil. It had already 
undergone one mighty transformation. It came to the 
country originally as religious conviction, and by im- 
perceptible degrees grew into political revolt. It was 
now on the verge of another change. 

The people as a whole cared more to speculate in 
dollars than in philosophy. They were blind to the 
large significance of small things; were too much en- 
grossed in the details of their full young life to see the 
big trend and sweep of them all together. They did 
not discern the kinship between their forefathers' revolt 
against spiritual dominion, or their grandfathers' re- 
volt against kings, and this lately developed national 
antipathy to laws of entail and debtors' prisons ; nor 
did they stop to wonder at the white man's increasing 
sensitiveness to blows upon a black man's skin. Yet 
it was the inherited tendency to think, and to experi- 
ment boldly by putting thoughts into practice, that 
was driving political parties into a new division on the 
question of slavery and was about to shatter old 
dogmas of belief. 

They failed to see the likeness between science with 
a large S, that began to invade life at every turn, and 
religion with a large R with which their childhood 
had been familiar. If the majority of Americans 
thought at all about the theological side of their new 
civilization, they were loyal to their fathers, even 
though falling away from their stiff code in practice. 
Straws already indicated the direction of the great 
storm that Darwin and his followers were to let 



' " 'z^^S'^^ix^Wi: "'"*: 




SAMUEL F. B. MORSE 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 473 

loose, but their books were only in process of being 
written. Time would convince many that " revelation 
might come through the microscope," but to a genera- 
tion that shuddered at the thought that the world had 
not been planned and neatly finished off, and Adam and 
Eve set up in housekeeping, in the space of six days, 
this bit of revelation was hidden. Good people, 
pained at innovation, felt obliged to protest, and 
enacted once more that comico-tragic scene in life 
which is played whenever the radical of one genera- 
tion slips unconsciously into the conservatist of the 
next. 

This new cult called science, seeming to threaten the 
very foundations of religion, had to such minds noth- 
ing in common with invention, working comfortable 
magic in daily living. They did not see that in ac- 
cepting one they must of necessity admit the other; 
that in stepping aboard a railroad train they were be- 
ginning a longer journey than was indicated on their 
tickets; or that in opening the doors of their barn to 
a new threshing machine they opened the covers of 
their Bibles to the prying lever of higher criticism. 
To conservatives, the men who gave themselves up to 
science and followed wherever it might lead them 
seemed utterly without excuse; infinitely more blame- 
worthy than the Concord philosophers with their half- 
pagan ideas, or even the anti-slavery maniacs who were 
threatening to turn civilization upside down. The 
world was full of strange noises ; each one of these 
bands proclaiming a different thing. We know to-day 
that their varied notes united in one great chord of 
moral earnestness : an earnestness for which thousands 
of that generation and the next willingly laid down their 
lives. We can see now that all shared the same sturdy 
Puritan characteristics; claimed the right to think for 



474 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

themselves ; denied that one mind had authority to im- 
pose conclusions on another; recognized individual 
responsibility in the choice between good and bad ; and 
stood firm rejecting compromise, unwilling to buy in- 
dulgence for body or soul. 

The anti-slavery enthusiasts made the greater clamor 
for their crusade was by word of mouth as well as 
print, and their protests were the most disturbing be- 
cause directed against a custom that could not conven- 
iently be dropped. The Concord philosophers and 
their satellites had leanings in the same direction, but 
could be more readily forgiven since they dealt in ab- 
stractions, and impartiality is easier in matters not 
personal. The scientists worked usually in silence, 
and it was confessed that they had brought forward 
practical marvels like the telegraph; but they were 
looked upon as a dangerous class, secretly fomenting 
opinions that reason could not refute but which meant 
death to cherished religious beliefs that had been good 
enough for holier men than they to live and die by. 

Up to that time even the word by which they set 
such store had a more restricted meaning. Science 
had been any one of the speculative arts. Philosophy 
embraced them all together, expressing what science 
does now, — with this important difference : science 
bears a vital relation to everyday life; philosophy was 
a region where the trained intellect might exercise, but 
it had no connection with practical affairs. It seemed 
quite reasonable in 1840 or 1850 for a brilliant young- 
ster of twenty-one to be made " professor of natural 
sciences " at an excellent academy, and expected to 
teach botany, chemistry, astronomy, and all other in- 
teresting and unpractical systems of mental gymnastics 
that students saw fit to demand. This was commonly 
the first step in the public career of the young men who 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 475 

adopted the new profession and worked out many im- 
portant problems during the following decades, among 
them that idea of scientific agriculture about which Jef- 
ferson had vaguely dreamed. 

" His lifetime saw the development of chemistry out 
of alchemy," said the daughter of one such man, speak- 
ing of the wonderful changes his quiet devotion helped 
to bring about, and the trenchant yet humorous philoso- 
phy of life that enabled him to labor in silence while 
noisy comrades claimed more and did less. He and 
his like, faithful of heart and bold of vision, toiled in 
many fields, slowly fathoming mysteries and translat- 
ing truths of nature as they saw them into formulas 
which were to revolutionize commerce and agriculture 
and medicine. Criticism they braved hourly; occa- 
sionally they braved indictment for manslaughter. 
The doctors had taken this grave risk in their experi- 
ments with ether. They were all gallant knights errant 
of the mind, tilting against problems half for the fun 
of it, half for love of humanity, — without thinking 
overmuch about that part of it, or caring at all what 
became of their souls according to a theology dear to 
their fathers, but narrow and inadequate to them, since 
their glimpse into wide new realms. This glimpse 
made of them the seers and poets of the nineteenth 
century. 

Like mountains, the greatness of poets and seers 
can be best measured from a distance. As a nation 
we prided ourselves on being practical. We frowned 
on artists as useless folk, and poets to be quite re- 
spectable had to write according to time-honored rules 
in " hours curtailed from their sleep and other refresh- 
ment," working by day at an obvious and more re- 
munerative trade. Yet, as it happened, the two men 
who accomplished most in the wizard's work of trans- 



476 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

forming the work-a-day world were artists by pro- 
fession. 

Steamboats and fine arts seem far apart, A poetic 
vision bridged the distance, and mechanics came to 
have such sway over Fulton's mind that it displaced 
portraits and landscape painting. He saw the part 
canals might perform in opening up inaccessible parts 
of the country and cementing the Union by bringing 
the people together. Dreaming of universal peace, he 
dallied with the problem of submarine explosives, 
first used in warfare about the time Sir Walter Raleigh 
sailed home from Virginia with a weed called tobacco. 

It was while coquetting with the French government 
about torpedoes that Fulton continued experiments on 
the Seine with his steamboat, the ugly duckling of his 
brood of inventions. Even Franklin had thought the 
idea of propelling boats by steam impractical. " Ful- 
ton's folly" this particular model was called; and we 
have Fulton's word that while experiments were in 
progress no one encouraged him by a single hopeful 
remark. It required a man like Livingston, broad- 
minded and wealthy to help him out; in addition, the 
vigorous opposition of a man like Vanderbilt to crystal- 
lize their combined faith into business sagacity; and, 
when the time was ripe, a man like Webster to argue 
before the Supreme Court with an eloquence that re- 
leased " every creek and river, every lake and harbor " 
from the monopoly they held so long. 

Morse the artist was earliest president of the Ameri- 
can Academy of Design. Morse the inventor worked 
in the growing solitude of his studio while dust gath- 
ered upon his canvases. For economy's sake he ate and 
cooked and slept in the narrow space that housed his 
inspiration, which was, to link by the mysterious 
" electro-magnetic " force that had been tamed to run 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 477 

along a wire, those lines of signal posts from which 
messages had long been sent laboriously, letter by letter. 
Twelve years of his life went into making the vision a 
reality, while his friends believed him mad and his 
family faced the possibility of putting him under re- 
straint. It took three years of labor to achieve a 
working model. Two years later, in 1837, he received 
his first patent. Then followed five years of besieging 
Congress for money with which to build a practical line. 
Granted finally in the closing hours of a session, it was 
ridiculed to the last by scoffers who recommended that 
half of it be spent on experiments with mesmerism, or 
denounced the whole scheme as a manifest fraud be- 
cause the dot and dash alphabet could only be under- 
stood by one versed in Pottawotomi. 

After that came two years' exciting battle with cir- 
cumstances. Twenty-seven thousand dollars of the 
precious $30,000 allowed by Congress went into the 
ground in vain experiments at laying wires in lead 
pipes. When this was found to be impractical, Morse 
told his superintendent of construction that the public 
must never know of the failure ; and the superintendent, 
being loyal and clever, broke the great plow used in the 
work. Newspapers dilated on the '* accident " and the 
time necessary for repairs, while Morse in despair 
snatched at the brief respite to cudgel his brains for 
some substitute. Finding none he was forced to adopt 
the poles that he had distrusted and rejected early in 
his experiments. But the line was finished; and the 
first message it carried, " What hath God wrought ! " 
had the old Puritan ring. It was at once a paean of 
victory and a solemn hymn of praise shortened to 
" telegraphese." 

Inventions such as these turned poetry to practical 
uses with a vigor that smacked of impiety. Men 



478 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

grasped eagerly after the " practical " benefits they 
brought, but were shocked at the clear thinking and dis- 
regard of precedent that inevitably followed. Willing 
to be cured of diseases, or to take short cuts through 
time and space, their eyes were holden to the new 
heavens and new earth visibly unrolled before their 
eyes. 

This was what might have been expected, for the 
school of experience is thorough. They were going 
too fast; and lessons slurred over have to be learned 
later in painful review. The nation had profited by 
many truths in its advanced course in politics and 
sociology, but one fundamental fact had been glanced 
at askance and hurried by in the hope that through 
some miracle, it might cease to exist when the 
time came to open the book at that spot and hunt 
for it. 

In the important matter of slavery, the country, as 
Henry Wilson so graphically put. it, *' attempted the 
impossible feat of moving at once in opposite direc- 
tions." Slavery had been with us from the first. A 
year before that Christmas season of 1620 when the 
MayHower landed its Pilgrims, a Dutch slaver sailed 
up the James River with its load of evil omen, and the 
twenty black wretches in its hold slipped unnamed and 
dumb into the life of the people, to wield an influence 
greater than that exercised by the later comers, whose 
names are remembered and revered. 

Little heed was paid to them, for slavery was found 
the world over, in savagery and civilization. The 
Bible recognized it; and God-fearing seekers after 
righteousness, like the worthies of Connecticut who 
felt constrained to reject the jury system because there 
was no warrant for it in the laws of Moses, had little 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 479 

difficulty in accepting a practice as old as history and 
so advantageous to thrift. The Crown encouraged it. 
Colonists both North and South were offenders. 
Newport became a flourishing slave mart, and Yankee 
commerce and shipping profited quite as much as 
Southern agriculture. There were over half a million 
bondmen on our free soil when the framers of the Con- 
stitution came together. 

These statesmen recognized the grim anomaly, but 
the need for harmony was paramount, and they felt 
unable to deal with it in the drastic manner it deserved. 
Whether slaves were to be considered at all in the 
representation in Congress; whether importation of 
Africans should be encouraged or prohibited ; and what 
must be done with fugitive slaves, were questions 
around which the compromises of the Constitution re- 
volved. A program of conciliation seemed best, and 
where that was impossible one of discreet silence. 
The makers of the Constitution hoped to accomplish 
by atrophy what they feared to undertake by ampu- 
tation. They were silent even as to its name, feeling 
it an evil, and shunned the very word, referring to 
the oppressed class as " persons held to service or 
labor." They rejoiced that there was a decided and 
apparently growing sentiment against it, and hoped 
that their provision for ending the trade in slaves 
from Africa after 1809, and taxing it meanwhile, 
would bring about its ultimate end. 

Six years later the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton 
gin struck the knell of that hope, rousing slavery 
from the coma they had sincerely regarded as the be- 
ginning of its death. From that moment its peaceful 
extinction receded into the distance. More and more 
excuses were ma-de for it. For a time the question of 



48o OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

its morality disappeared from view. It was first as- 
sumed to be a necessity, then asserted and believed to 
be a positive blessing. Later the right or wrong in- 
herent in it again came under discussion and the old 
Prophet's cry, " Repent ye ! " rang through the country 
from end to end; but for years only its economic and 
political aspects interested society. 

It had long been known that the soil of the South 
could produce excellent cotton, but the labor of sepa- 
rating the fibers from the seed was too great to make 
it a profitable crop. A negro woman working the en- 
tire day could clean only a single pound. With this 
newly invented machine, a slave by turning a crank 
prepared fifty times as much in the same number of 
hours. Only one thing could happen. There was an 
immense rise in the value of cotton lands, and a great 
increase in the demand for slave labor. During the 
fifteen years that intervened between Whitney's inven- 
tion and the day when the slave trade ceased by law, 
thousands of captives were brought into the country 
from Africa, while the purchase of Louisiana added 
30,000 more slaves to the South as well as a vast 
territory. 

This removed slavery from the old patriarchal re- 
lation of master and servant as members of one 
household to that of callous business in which the slave 
was merely an animal whose work and profit were to 
be calculated like those of the cattle whose labors he 
shared. His hours of toil were fifteen or sixteen out 
of the twenty-four. The estimated cost of his food 
for a year was $7.50. A like trivial amount covered 
his clothing and his blanket, and the sacks he used in 
picking cotton. An easy sum explains why the early 
hope of slavery's extinction vanished, and how money- 
lust gradually dulled or obliterated the sense of right 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 481 

In Virginia in 1790 the price of a field hand was 
$250. In i860 it had increased to $1600. 

By that time one third of the population of the South 
was slave, though only about one white man in twenty 
was a slave owner. The system created social dis- 
tinctions unknown elsewhere in America. The slave- 
owners were an aristocracy blessed with wealth and 
cursed with the idleness wherein Satan finds his 
choicest opportunities. They " did not vex themselves 
with the harassing cares of commerce, nor were they 
reduced to the necessity of toil. They devoted them- 
selves to social intercourse, to the cultivation of ele- 
gant literature and fine oratory," to quote one of them- 
selves. They gathered into their own hands political 
and social consequence, ruled despotically over their 
slaves, and insisted in national politics on the demo- 
cratic principle of State rights to safeguard them in 
the exercise of this feudal power. In addition to the 
aristocrats and their dusky vassals, there was a large 
class of " poor whites," looked down upon by even the 
Negroes themselves; and also a small and distrusted 
element of free blacks. The slaves were more disliked 
and feared as they grew in number ; partly because their 
increase made them a race menace, partly because of 
the viciousness in human nature which makes a man 
want to kick the fellow man he bullies when he can 
not kick back. 

Mrs. Trollope, with her strong preference for the 
comforts of England, felt happy and at her ease under 
the ministrations of the slaves of the South. Nowhere 
else in America did she find domestic service of a kind 
to be endured. But she deplored the effect of the sys- 
tem on the masters. She " could not but think that 
the citizens of the United States had contrived by their 
political alchemy to extract all that was most noxious 



482 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

both in democracy and slavery, and had poured the 
strange mixture through every vein of the moral or- 
ganization of their country." 

From worst to best the possibilities of the system 
were wide. There were pampered house servants in 
plenty, and touching and beautiful friendships between 
masters and dependents whose dark skins condemned 
them to servitude. But for scores of these there were 
thousands driven to the fields in herds, whose patience 
and tractability speak more eloquently for their loyalty 
than for their intelligence. The fear of slave insurrec- 
tion under which the masters lived seems to have been 
a mirage of their own guilty consciences, for the few 
attempts of this kind serve only to emphasize their 
rarity. 

Yet laws for the two races were notoriously unequal. 
An Englishman who visited South Carolina about 1830 
wrote that " until recently " there had been seventy-one 
crimes for which slaves paid with their lives, for which 
the severest punishment meted out to whites was im- 
prisonment in the penitentiary. The only severe laws 
controlling whites in their dealings with blacks were 
those against educating these profitable dependents out 
of sheep-like acquiescence in their fate. Intelligence 
might bode ill to their oppressors; so the penalty for 
teaching a slave to read was very heavy. In some 
States even free Negroes could not be educated. 
They were, indeed, particularly feared, the fact of their 
being free arguing more brains or greater thrift 
and therefore greater possibilities of danger. Under 
the laws of South Carolina free Negroes who once 
left the State could not return; nor could such un- 
desirable citizens enter from another State; while if 
brought by ship they must be detained in jail at the 
cost of the captain until his vessel put to sea again. 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 483 

Economically slavery was to the South like some high- 
power explosive, — immensely valuable and potentially 
most dangerous. 

Politically it was also valuable, and as events proved 
even more explosive. The fact that each State was 
entitled to two votes in the United States Senate made 
the relative number of free and slave States a matter 
of great political importance. It was about that cen- 
tral fact that the political battle raged. The Ordinance 
of 1787 made United States territory north of the 
Ohio River forever free. That little was heard of 
slavery in national politics and that there was a practi- 
cal balance of power between the two sections up to 
1820, was due to the chance that the eight new States 
entering the Union during that time lay four to the 
south and four to the north of the Ohio, and that they 
happened to be admitted in nearly alternate order, so 
that neither side gained a*ny marked advantage. 

There were eleven slaveholding and eleven non- 
slaveholding States at the time Missouri desired ad- 
mittance with slavery. It was known that Arkansas 
had hopes of the same kind. This prospective gain 
by the South of four votes in the Senate roused the 
North, heretofore quiescent if not indifferent, to an 
animated discussion of slavery's moral status. Ex- 
tremists argued that it ought to be restricted in both 
Missouri and Arkansas. Radical Southerners con- 
tended that Congress had no right to impose restric- 
tions of this kind on new States, and fell back on an 
old threat of disunion that had already done service 
for both North and South. 

Hot debates in Congress and among the people re- 
sulted in a plan of compromise, — a proposal to settle 
the dispute by dividing Federal territory arbitrarily 
at the line of 36° 30^ and permitting slavery to the 



484 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

south of it but forbidding it to the north, except in 
the case of Missouri, which was to be allowed to enter 
the Union as a slave State, though it lay entirely north 
of this line. This was the famous Missouri Compro- 
mise. Henry Clay made it his own during the two 
years it was before the people, and gained thereby his 
greatest reputation. Attached to a bill to admit Maine 
as a free State, it became a law in March, 1820, and 
the final trial of strength was postponed forty years. 

But these proved to be years of increasing unrest. 
Although the balance of power in the Senate was kept 
for a time by admitting new States in couples, a free 
State and a slave State on the same day, the moral 
question was not allowed to lapse. In the furor for 
reform that gained headway soon after the Missouri 
Compromise, so grave a matter as this of slavery in 
a free country could not fail to attract attention. That 
season of agitation in behalf'of the poor and oppressed 
strengthened the inborn convictions of those opposed 
to slavery, and their denunciations added materially to 
the bitterness of those who thought their rights as- 
sailed. Each side advanced to more radical ground. 
Then came the movement for Nullification in 1832, 
adding patriotic indignation on the part of the North. 

The South's need for new territory out of which 
to make more slave States, forced the annexation 
of Texas and brought on the Mexican War. But 
the very territory wrested from Mexico introduced 
irritating slavery questions of its own. Whether the 
line of 36° 30' applied to this new acquisition, or only 
to regions under Federal control at the time the Com- 
promise measure was passed, could be vigorously 
argued on both sides. Mexican law prohibited slavery. 
It was easy to declare that void ; but when the lapse of 
years and unforeseen conditions in California ex- 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 485 

hausted slave territory while there yet remaned 
stretches out of which free States might be made, the 
South began a determined effort to repeal the Missouri 
Compromise and throw open to slavery all United 
States territory wherever located. This was success- 
ful, but opposition to it brought on the Civil War. 

Abolition societies had existed before the Constitu- 
tion, but they had little political importance up to the 
date of the Missouri Compromise, and even after it. 
While slavery was regarded as a question of labor 
rather than of morals, instinctive feeling against it 
spent itself in efforts to palliate the evil, not to remove 
it. Such was the object of the national society for 
colonizing Negroes in Africa that was formed in 18 16 
at a meeting over which Henry Clay presided. Madi- 
son became its president and Henry Clay its vice-presi- 
dent. Chief Justice Marshall was a member. Jeffer- 
son favored it. So did John Randolph, for the char- 
acteristic reason that it was meant for free Negroes, 
and by taking these dangerous firebrands out of the 
country would in the long run secure property in 
slaves. For fifty years it enlisted the interest of many 
brilliant minds, some for reasons quite the opposite of 
those urged by Randolph ; but it failed at any time to 
win the confidence of the Negroes themselves. The 
less enterprising did not even know of its existence 
and some of the most intelligent shared Randolph's 
view. A national convention of colored men in Phila- 
delphia in 1 83 1 addressed the members of the Coloniza- 
tion Society in a petition respectful in form, but flatly 
suggesting that it was " pursuing the direct road to 
perpetuate slavery with all its unchristian concomitants 
in this boasted land of freedom ; and as citizens and 
men whose best blood is sapped to gain popularity for 
that institution we would in the most feeling manner 



486 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

beg of them to desist; or, if we must be sacrificed to 
their philanthropy, we would rather die at home." 

A scheme which might have worked to the good of 
all, and ended slavery without the horrors of civil war, 
if passions could only have been held in leash, was that 
for gradual emancipation, credited by his admirers to 
Thomas Jefferson. But Providence willed otherwise. 
And, as Lincoln, greatest of the prophets and martyrs 
of the years that lay just ahead, admonished his coun- 
trymen in the solemn words of his second inaugural, if 
God willed that all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil should 
be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash be 
paid in another drawn by the sword, " as was said three 
thousand years ago so still it must be said, ' the judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " 

In a general way the militant abolition movement 
dates from the time of the Nullification excitement. 
It was then that the prophets' note of warning that had 
been sounding here and there began to be heard above 
other notes, and that the missionary impulse gained 
a force which threw prudence to the winds, and under 
the motto inscribed on Garrison's paper the " Libera- 
tor," " Duty is ours, Consequences are God's," began 
its active crusade, — a crusade in which it must be ad- 
mitted the wishes of the Lord and the works of the 
Evil One were at times hopelessly confused. Anti- 
slavery societies increased at a prodigious rate between 
1835 and 1840, and the words and acts of their mem- 
bers began to sting like scorpions. In spite of this 
such agitation was deplored both North and South and 
once again it was proved that prophets are without 
honor in their own country. 

The first marked result was to rouse in the North 
resentment and a feeling of hostility against the col- 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 487 

ored people themselves. Indeed, the Negro as an indi- 
vidual had been steadily losing favor through all the 
years that his cause gained in importance. When 
Lafayette, who belonged in France to a society called 
" Les Amis des Noirs " and early applied for member- 
ship in one of our own abolition societies, returned to 
the United States he was astounded at the race preju- 
dice that had developed between his visits. At the 
time of the Revolution free Negroes had been allowed 
to vote in New Jersey and in North Carolina ; and he 
remembered that they fought gallantly at Lexington, 
and that white and black soldiers used to mess together 
in utmost friendliness. 

After the manner of reformers, the abolitionists were 
more zealous than diplomatic, and their willingness to 
match words with deeds shocked their conservative 
neighbors. Often when they were merely trying to 
follow the Golden Rule at great inconvenience to them- 
selves, they were accused of a wanton desire for the 
most intimate relationships. Anger roused a super- 
sensitiveness that found expression in divers and often 
turbulent ways. In 1835 Garrison was mobbed and 
hustled through the streets of Boston with a halter 
round his neck. Whittier was stoned. For the crime 
of admitting a colored girl to her school in the free 
State of Connecticut, Prudence Crandall, who acted 
in utter disaccord with her name, was imprisoned in a 
cell from which a murderer had just been led to execu- 
tion. Tried three times, her case was not decided 
upon its merits, but finally quashed for informality. 
Her brother meanwhile spent eight months in a Wash- 
ington jail on the charge of giving an antislavery 
paper to a man who had asked for it. 

Webster complained with bitterness that there was 
no North ; that resistance to demands of the South 



488 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

was overborne by Northern men. Feeling grew until 
mob violence ceased to be new or startling. In 1841 
Cincinnati, which some one called " a conquered 
province of Kentucky," was for two days under con- 
trol of rioters; the cause of the disturbance being 
an abolition paper called the " Philanthropist." After 
the publication of Dr. Channing's book on slavery, 
South Carolinians declared that if he should enter that 
State at the head of 20,000 men he would never get 
out alive. Handbills and lithographs were sent to 
abolitionists showing them hanging from the gallows, 
and offering rewards for the heads or ears of such 
disturbers of the peace. 

The murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton, Illinois, 
in November, 1837; the oath of his brother Owen be- 
side his dead body to further the cause in which he 
had lost his life; riots and burning in Boston and 
Philadelphia and Cincinnati, were the serious side of 
feeling that found a quaint expression in the Native 
American newspapers that scored Forrest the actor for 
playing Othello. One of these asserted that if caught, 
Shakespeare would deserve lynching. Whether the 
editor imagined him a contemporary is not clear. 
The " Gladiator," a play in which slaves successfully 
revolt, came under condemnation. Forrest was warned 
not to act the character of Spartacus a second time. 

Even John Quincy Adams astonished Fanny Kemble 
as he sat beside her at dinner by breaking out in expres- 
sions of sincere disgust at Desdemona ; whose mis- 
fortunes, he said, were nothing more than she deserved, 
— a just judgment upon her for marrying a " nigger." 

Adams had never identified himself with the anti- 
slavery men. He thought the colonization scheme 
more impractical than casting nativities by the stars, 
and said that if the Almighty wanted to get rid of 




1 89 1, by M. P. Rice 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 489 

slavery He would find better means than either the 
colonization or the abolition societies. Yet he fully 
realized the magnitude and the menace of slavery. 
No one attentive to the progress of our history, he 
wrote in December, 1838, could fail to see that in the 
silent lapse of time slavery had been winding its cob- 
web thread around all our free institutions; and his 
fight against the passage of a " gag " law in Congress 
designed to make it impossible to consider petitions on 
the subject, was one of the stirring achievements of 
his later years, for which he was accused of conspir- 
ing with British abolitionists and threatened with ex- 
pulsion. The issue was bigger than men ; it compelled 
them to take sides. 

Congress seethed with feeling. In the House an 
hour came while Giddings of Ohio was speaking when 
a colleague from Georgia questioned him; he re- 
plied; the Georgian threatened to knock him down if 
he repeated certain words; he did repeat them, and 
while the bellicose Georgian was being borne from the 
hall by his friends, a fire-eater from Louisiana with a 
cocked pistol took his place, threatening to shoot. A 
friend of Giddings placed himself opposite the Lou- 
isianian, his hand conveniently near his concealed wea- 
pon. Members from the Democratic side took posi- 
tions near the Southerner, each with his hand in his 
pocket, while New Englanders lined up on the other 
side, and " thus confronted and thus supported, Gid- 
dings continued his speech to the end." 

H there was a crevice of weakness or inconsistency 
in a man's nature, slavery found it out. Personal feel- 
ing about it made strange political fellowships, and in- 
dividuals changed sides upon it most unexpectedly. 
They either succumbed to its insidious poison or joined 
the chorus of denunciation. They could not stand 



490 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

still. Usually men became cautious as they grew older 
and wished to drop discussion and if possible to let 
sleeping dogs lie. 

There are few instances more pathetically dramatic 
than the last great debate in which the three congres- 
sional giants, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, took part. 
It occurred in 1850 at the time California was ad- 
mitted to the Union. Part of this new State lay 
below the line of 36° 30', but the argonauts who had 
peopled it so suddenly were not of a sort that took 
kindly to slavery or its doctrines. There were already 
fifteen free and fifteen slave States. To admit Cali- 
fornia free would break the balance of power, and the 
South protested quite as vigorously as the North had 
done when Missouri entered. It seemed that the peo- 
ple were ready to fly at one another's throats. Clay 
had quieted a similar disturbance in 1820. He was 
besought to exercise his great influence again. He 
was now an old man and had retired from the Senate 
seven years before; but to meet this crisis he was re- 
elected, and shortly after his return, rose to offer a 
" comprehensive plan " for adjusting the difficulty. 
He proposed that California be admitted as it wished 
without slavery; that the rest of the land acquired 
from Mexico be divided into two territories in which 
slavery should be neither authorized nor forbidden, 
presumably leaving the old Mexican law in force. 
That the slave trade be forbidden in the District of 
Columbia, but that slavery as an institution be per- 
mitted there. That Texas receive $10,000,000 for 
the adjustment of her state boundaries. Finally, that 
a new and much stricter fugitive slave law be enacted. 

The compromises of the Constitution had been 
mutual concessions necessary that the people might 
learn to live and work together; they endured thirty 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 491 

and three years; those upon which Clay had staked 
the reputation of vigorous manhood lasted thirty years, 
but proved like the half-hearted measures of the Colo- 
nization Society, only a postponing of final decision. 
These of his old age were meant to hush discussion for 
all time. They only lasted three years, instead of 
thirty. Neither side was pleased by them, which is 
perhaps the best evidence that they were as truly a 
compromise as that heated subject and time could af- 
ford. After allowing a week for this plan of his to 
filter through the minds of the people. Clay supported 
it in a speech that continued for two days. 

He seemed feeble when he rose to begin ; he was so 
feeble in fact that he had asked a friend's assistance 
in mounting the long flight of steps that led to the 
Senate chamber; but he would not listen to the sug- 
gestion that he defer his speech. The country was in 
danger, li anything he could say might avert it, his 
health, even his life, was of little consequence. As he 
proceeded his voice gained in strength and his audience 
succumbed once more to his old eloquence and charm. 
But it was pathetically evident that in thus summoning 
back old energy he was making an effort of will over 
failing powers, for which his life might indeed be the 
forfeit. 

In the debate that followed Calhoun opposed him. 
He was opposed to giving in to the North on any point 
whatever. He too was feeble ; his death was to occur 
within the month. He was already too ill to speak. 
What he had to say was read to the Senate by his 
friend Mason of Virginia, while he sat by, pale as a 
statue, the mark of death visibly upon him, but with 
burning eyes that flashed in feverish haste from face 
to face to read the effect of his words as they fell from 
the lips of another. 



492 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

On the 7th of March, Webster, the last of the great 
triumvirate, spoke in his turn, and to many his speech 
was the most pathetic of all, for it seemed to his anti- 
slavery friends to show not failing bodily or mental 
powers, but how far the corroding effects of slavery 
had eaten into his New England spirit. " I speak to- 
day for the preservation of the Union, hear me for 
my cause," he said, and went on to plead for com- 
promise ; to admit that slave labor was necessary to 
the South ; to imply that slavery had changed from 
the curse it had once been into a blessing, religious, 
social, and moral; that the age of cotton had become 
the golden age of the South. It was a powerful 
speech, one of his greatest, but it " fell heavy " on 
many hearts. He was denounced as one who had 
placed himself in the " dark list of apostates," a ** rec- 
reant son of Massachusetts who misrepresented her in 
the Senate," and compared to Benedict Arnold. On 
the other hand, the patriots who feared strife and still 
wished to throttle discussion, crowded his mail with 
letters of appreciation. "If Washington had risen 
from his tomb and addressed the Senate he would 
have uttered the words of your speech," wrote one of 
them. 

Although Clay's plan at first pleased neither side, 
each thinking that the other gained too much, there 
was a sincere desire in all sections to end contention, 
and the law was passed. Its friends rejoiced in it as 
a " finality." Calhoun died before it became a law. 
Two years later Clay and Webster followed him. If 
either hoped to gain the Presidency by means of it, 
Death intervened. Their places in the Senate and in 
the public eye were speedily filled by new leaders. The 
country settled itself to an honest attempt to consider 
other matters, but the old question would not down. 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 493 

The contest in Congress, and the death of the men 
so long prominent as leaders, had shaken and demoral- 
ized both political parties. A considerable portion of 
the Democrats rallied round an entirely new man, 
Stephen A. Douglas, whose partizans were blatant 
against " Old fogies " and clamorous that " Young 
America " be given the reins of power. The Whigs 
who had begun their party career as " Clay's Infant 
School " and had grown old with him, remained loyal 
as an organization to this last compromise of his, but 
as individuals found that they could not honestly 
reconcile it with their sense of right. Those whose 
sympathies leaned towards the South allied themselves 
with the Democrats; the antislavery elements in both 
camps flowed together into a new free-soil organiza- 
tion; and the Whig party was dead. "Died of an 
effort to swallow the Fugitive Slave Law," was the 
epitaph suggested for it. 

The Fugitive Slave Law was harsh indeed; but it 
is notorious that injustice and misery in the abstract 
make little appeal to individual men and women, 
though single tragedies can fire the mass of people with 
avenging energy. Even a telling bit of fiction may 
exert more influence than a hundred authentic cases 
considered together. From this comes the world-old 
habit of teaching by parable. A parable called " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," written by a young woman and printed 
as a serial story in a newspaper in 1852, had no little 
part in firing indignation against this new Fugitive 
Slave Law, The lash and the sundering of families 
were unlovely details that the advocates of slavery 
could not deny ; and this story set them forth in a way 
that gripped the imagination. 

Even Southerners themselves could not face un- 
moved concrete instances of the working of their sys- 



494 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tern. John Randolph was once asked by a young man, 
who was the greatest orator he had ever heard, his 
questioner meaning to draw out reminiscences of 
Patrick Henry. To his amazement Randolph an- 
swered : " The greatest orator I ever heard was a 
woman. She was a slave. She was a mother, and 
her rostrum was the auction block," and rising he 
imitated the tones and pathos with which this woman 
appealed from law to the innate justice of the bystand- 
ers, and the scorching words of indignation with which 
she finally denounced them. " There was eloquence ! " 
he said. " I have heard no man speak like that. It 
was overpowering," and he sat down as though over- 
come himself by the recollection. Then, as if fearing 
that he had expressed himself too freely to a North- 
erner, he entered upon an explanation and defense of 
the policy of the South. 

Every free-state sympathizer in the North, man, 
woman or child, knew by actual experience or by 
hearsay of just such instances as this. Genuine stories 
that were typical became almost as widely and pas- 
sionately familiar as the imaginary woes of Uncle 
Tom. There was the Edmonston family,- " educated, 
religious, and refined, and valued in the market at 
$15,000." And Emily Russell, the quadroon girl who 
was sent South with a coffle gang, her ransom for any 
reasonable sum having been refused for the sinister 
reason that she was " the most beautiful woman in 
the country." Fortunately she died ; and her poor old 
mother learning of her death broke out, not in lamenta- 
tion, but in praise to the Lord who had heard her 
prayer at last. 

Many who lived near the border talked with and 
fed and passed on to their next good friend the shiver- 
ing wretches who came to them in the dead of night 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 495 

by means of grapevine telegraph and underground rail- 
way; and after passing them on rejoiced to hear no 
news of them, for in this case no news was good news 
and meant probable escape. 

Sometimes such white sympathizers were forced to 
witness and actively assist in returning the miserable 
fugitives to bondage. The new law required citizens 
to assist in the capture of runaway slaves whether 
they liked it or not, and did not even allow the Negro 
to testify In his own defense. Sometimes the men en- 
gaged in such efforts at helping Negroes to freedom 
were cast into prison for " slave stealing " and suffered 
even to death. Happenings like these did not tend to 
break the spirit that had made Garrison's " Liberator " 
a factor in American history, though the paper had 
been started without funds and even without the 
promise of a single subscriber. The new Fugitive 
Slave Law was a subject that rent the churches. 
Theodore Parker said that for two weeks he wrote 
his sermons " with a sword In the open drawer under 
the inkstand, and a pistol in the flap of the desk 
loaded and ready." Anti-manhunting leagues were 
formed to which octogenarians and young enthusiasts 
alike belonged. They carried no firearms, but met to 
practise a sort of jiu-jitsu drill for their self-imposed 
mission. " First persuasion, then force," was their 
motto. H it came to the latter they proposed to seize 
and hurry away the man who would not be persuaded. 
Each member had his work assigned him, " even to 
the particular limb to which he should devote his atten- 
tion." 

The inflammable South meanwhile was not quiet. 
It demanded more and more, and set about the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise under the leadership of 
that champion of Young America and of " progress," 



496 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

Douglas, upon whose shoulders frayed and trailing 
remnants of the mantle of Clay's popularity had de- 
scended. He was wonderfully effective, a shrewd 
speaker of untiring energy, whose audacity was 
matched only by his ambition. He was so zealous a 
believer in " manifest destiny " and in the Monroe 
Doctrine that he desired, so the papers averred, to 
have the Caribbean Sea declared an American lake. 
Although still comparatively young his convictions on 
slavery had already undergone marked changes. In 
1849, h^ described the Missouri Compromise as " can- 
nonized in the hearts of the American People " ; "a 
sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be 
reckless enough to disturb " ; but in a few years he 
came to a point where he regarded it as only a matter 
for local police regulation. In 1854, mainly through 
his efforts, the bill to organize the two territories of 
Kansas and Nebraska, both of which lay north of 
36° 30', leaving the question of slavery in them to be 
decided by what Douglas called squatter sovereignty, 
the vote of their own people, was passed by Congress 
and signed by President Pierce. 

At once smoldering resentment of the new Fugitive 
Slave Law, which after all had been obeyed in the 
main, and indignation at such wholesale retrogression 
in principle blazed out anew; for the effect of the 
bill was to repeal the Missouri Compromise and open 
all the territory of the vast Northwest to slavery. 
In the excitement that followed, it was found that the 
Prophet's cry of warning had been heeded even where 
most resented. That slave pen within sight of the 
Capitol, crowned with its gracious figure of Liberty, 
had been accepted heretofore as a matter of course; 
now it had become a mockery too bitter to endure. 
Once again the mandate, " Choose ye this day whom 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 497 

ye will serve ! " thundered imperative and clear. Once 
again the great question hurried men off their old 
footing on to new ground. 

In this new crisis freedom, like slavery, found its 
foremost champion in the State of Illinois, but in a 
man the opposite of Douglas, physically and mentally. 
Douglas was short and thick-set and aggressive. The 
figure and character of Lincoln, we know as we know 
those of no other public man. Like Clay, Lincoln 
had opposed slavery where slavery was popular in the 
days of his ambitious adolescence. Unlike Clay, he 
firmly opposed it in the day of his power. He was 
already a state leader. In his one term in Congress 
during the Mexican War he had voted forty times for 
the Wilmot Proviso and he had introduced a bill to rid 
the national capital of that crying scandal, the slave 
pen. 

At the end of his term he had returned to Illinois, 
where in his growing interest in the practice of law, 
politics almost faded from his mind. But the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise " roused him as he had 
never been before." A young man who was after- 
ward to live in the closest touch with him during years 
of stress, had his first sight of him at the moment 
when quivering with excitement, Lincoln burst into 
the office of his friend and neighbor, Milton Hay, 
waving a newspaper and exclaiming, *' This will never 
do ! Douglas treats it as a matter of indifference mor- 
ally whether slavery js voted down or voted up. I tell 
you it will never' do ! " 

When the militant in spirit and young in years 
gathered in the Bloomington convention of May, 1856, 
where the Republican party of Illinois came into being, 
Lincoln, teacher and prophet, predestined leader and 
martyr, immovable in the granite of his stern moral 



498 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

convictions, stood upon the platform and made that 
ringing " lost " speech of his, an utterance so inspired 
that even practical reporters forgot their duty and let 
the eloquent words escape. Lincoln himself could 
never recall w^hat he said; but those v^ho listened, and 
w^ho saw his rugged face transfigured by emotion, 
never forgot the hour. Later he supplied cold logic 
in addition to magnetic enthusiasm, opposing the clever 
word-juggling of Douglas with relentless reasoning to 
pierce his casuistry. 

Events followed thick and fast. The clash between 
Southern ambition and free-state feeling soon brought 
about actual civil war in Kansas, where one after an- 
other four Democratic governors with a strong bias 
toward slavery, turned free-state advocates in spite of 
personal advantage and party loyalty. 

Men who had withstood the beguilement of Nullifi- 
cation cast their fortunes with the South. Howell 
Cobb, who had been against disunion in 1832, became 
an arch conspirator in the cabinet of Buchanan. Jef- 
ferson Davis, who had asked indignantly in the Senate 
if that chamber was " to be the hotbed in which plants 
of sedition were to be nursed," and as secretary of 
war had declared that rebellion must be crushed, was 
hurried along the road that was to bring him to leader- 
ship of a great rebellion. 

Oregon in the far Northwest, swinging pendulum 
fashion as far as it could go without adopting slavery, 
entered the Union as a free State but with lav^s more 
severe against Negroes than those of the South, for 
there was not a slave State in which a free Negro 
could not sue in court. In 1857 the United States 
Supreme Court rendered its decision in the Dred Scott 
case, affirming that Negroes had no rights the white 
man was bound to respect. In 1858 the great Lincoln- 



THE SEERS AND THE PROPHETS 499 

Douglas debates took place, in which Douglas gained 
a senatorship and lost the presidency, goal of his ambi- 
tion as it had been of Clay's. His antagonist, uncon- 
scious of destiny and unshaken by defeat, rejoiced 
that he had been able " to make some marks " which 
would tell for the cause of civil liberty, and resolved 
to fight in the ranks in the political campaign of 
i860. In 1859 occurred the John Brown raid with its 
useless sacrifice of lives and its train of tragic after- 
events that served the purpose of expiatory justice, — 
and more ; for the song, " John Brown's Body," im- 
provised by the Massachusetts 12th in Boston Harbor, 
grew into an emotional and far-reaching force. 

Finally, in i860 the Republican convention gathered 
in the Wigwam at Chicago and nominated for Presi- 
dent the man who had expected to fight in the ranks, — 
Lincoln, with the heart of gold and the sense of right 
that only pity could make swerve a hair's breadth from 
strict justice. Providence willed that he was to carry 
the sorrows of a nation upon his sorrowing spirit 
through four bitter years of war ; and that through his 
act the tragedy of slavery should come to its end. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 

WHEN kindly Harriet Martineau was in this 
country about 1833 working with bee-hke 
industry to gather material for her book, 
" Society in America," almost every man of note 
marched up and placed himself at the end of her ear- 
trumpet. Commendable gallantry, urged on by curi- 
osity, prompted this obliging readiness, for a live au- 
thoress was not often to be met with in the United 
States of those days. But the good lady was more 
earnest than sprightly, and it is to be feared that some 
of the gentlemen lived to regret their politeness. One 
citizen of Cincinnati, — " one of the noblest citizens," 
she assures us, — writhed impaled while she prosed on 
in eulogy of his raw little town as a dwelling place 
for the ambitious and the philanthropic, until at last 
he got a chance to answer: 

" Yes, we have a new creation going on here. 
Won't you come and dabble in the mud? " 

" Mud " there was in abundance during those forma- 
tive years, but the mud had a quality all its own. Our 
new political creation differed, even in its materials, 
from others about whose beginnings records have been 
kept. When it became Ex-President Madison's turn to 
approach Miss Martineau's ear-trumpet, he explained 
this difference by telling her that the United States 
had been created " to prove to the world things here- 
tofore held to be impossible." 

500 



THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 501 

America has indeed been a place of experiment ever 
since its discovery flung a challenge to the discontented 
whisper already running through hovel and palace of 
the old world, the insistent, disturbing question 
whether common people had not a right to a voice in 
their own affairs. Men willing to sacrifice all they 
owned to learn the answer took up the challenge. 
Women akin to them in spirit were not wanting; and 
so it came about that this portion of North America 
was settled by a class radically different to those who 
went forth where hunger or lust of conquest were im- 
pelling forces. Unworthy motives were by no means 
absent; but, broadly speaking, the best impulses of 
humanity rather than the worst inspired its coloniza- 
tion. 

A large proportion of the settlers crossed the ocean 
for the privilege of doing their own thinking on one 
subject or another. During the colonial period the 
injustice of arbitrary taxation roused loyal subjects 
of the British King to protest and then to revolt. 
After they had gained their independence the relation 
of the newly formed nation to its component parts, — 
State Rights, — and later still the rights of the indi- 
vidual tangled in the tragic question of slavery, occu- 
pied them with ever-increasing intensity until the Civil 
War. Since then one or more such questions has 
been with us in varying form. Lately we have been 
face to face with the wrongs of the commercially op- 
pressed. Our whole national, intellectual life might 
be summed up by saying that it began with insistence 
on the Rights of Man and has now reached considera- 
tion of the Rights of Men. In other words, side by 
side with the " mud " inseparable from opening up and 
settling a new country, great and purely moral ques- 
tions have occupied our people, who have alwa,ys 



502 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

craved and always had such problems on which to whet 
their minds and their courage. 

It has been said that the United States became a 
nation in spite of themselves, because up to the point 
of actual rebellion, the colonists had no thought of 
changing allegiance. But they came of fighting stock; 
and after town meetings had changed imperceptibly 
but inevitably into continental armies, they fought as 
they had argued, with such whole-hearted earnestness 
that in the end they found themselves free when they 
had only meant to be rationally governed. Whether 
the unexpected outcome be looked upon as the largess 
of Providence, or only a sarcastic renewal by Fate of 
that challenge flung to the masses when the New World 
was discovered, depends upon the mental angle of the 
observer. Circumstances working upon human nature 
form the dynamo of history. 

After seven years of fighting, although waters three 
weeks wide rolled between Americans and their former 
allegiance, they were only at the threshold of their 
real struggle. They had boasted that they meant to 
be a new and specially righteous nation. Instant proof 
was demanded. And the proof required of them was 
a sacrifice of the first-fruits of victory, — that they give 
up a portion of their newly won liberty for the common 
good. 

All told they were only a handful on the edge of an 
unexplored continent, — in numbers less than are gath- 
ered now under the roofs of our largest town. They 
were scattered far and wide in helpless little groups, 
divided by leagues of wilderness ; a wilderness not even 
comfortably empty, but alive with savages who came 
and went like shadows, who barely tolerated the set- 
tlers when friendly, and when angered were enemies 
more to be dreaded than wild beasts. Behind these 



THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 503 

mysterious deadly people stretched cordons of white 
men far from friendly. Spaniards to the south of 
them; French along the Mississippi River; their own 
blood-brothers in Canada. 

More disquieting than any or all of these was their 
own division of interest. No longer colonies, they 
had not yet become states; but they were already 
hemmed in by sectional needs and prejudices. A 
South and an East had long existed. A West was be- 
ginning to make itself heard; and the citizens of one 
section had difficulty in understanding the others. 

Even Washington, for all his breadth of view, is 
reported to have said to General Lincoln : 

" We know what we Virginians have been fighting 
for, with our fine farms and climate. But can you tell 
what it is that you New Englanders have fought for, 
with your cold and barren lands? " 

" Yes," the other answered with some asperity, " for 
the liberty of using our heads and our hands." 

With Washington as President, the new Govern- 
ment took up its work. The half century that fol- 
lowed falls naturally into three divisions, not unlike 
those in the unfolding life of an individual. They 
might be called the years of Consciousness, of Growth, 
and of Conscience. 

During the first, which ended with the signing of the 
treaty of Ghent in 18 14, the country was engaged in 
establishing its relations with the outside world. De- 
tails of domestic adjustment, engrossing as they were, 
fade historically into insignificance before questions of 
international import. 

In the next period questions of foreign policy gave 
way to the demands of national growth and develop- 
ment. Manufactures gained upon and overtook agri- 
culture. Domestic commerce grew to overshadow 



504 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

foreign trade. Exploration and annexation brought 
vast tracts under the potent young flag. Invention 
took a long step forward, opening a new chapter, not 
only in American history but in the habits of the whole 
civilized world. Far reaching as these changes proved 
to be, they were inspired primarily by home needs. 
With the egotism of youth the country was interested 
mainly in itself; was voicing its own desires, and 
vaunting and testing its own lusty strength. 

As in the case of a growing lad, moral development 
went on silently with the physical and when the time 
was ripe, suddenly and imperatively claimed attention. 
The absorbing questions of the third period, differing 
radically from those that preceded them, came upon 
the country before it knew it and engrossed it com- 
pletely. 

It is curious to note how strands of varied and 
purely material interests braided and wove themselves 
into one great moral issue which dominated the ten 
years preceding the War of the Rebellion. Develop- 
ment of machinery, invented merely to manufacture 
cotton, led by devious but clearly traceable ways to the 
annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. Dis- 
covery of gold in California sent a large and eager 
part of the population sweeping across the continent 
in a mad rush. Though a rush primarily after gold, 
it was in truth more; it was a test of endurance and 
a strengthener of character. In that rough battle with 
fortune artificial barriers crumbled. Right might as- 
sert itself in uncouth form, but wrong could not mas- 
querade as right under shelter of convention. 

Possession of Aladdin caves of treasure gave the 
country the comfortable assurance that it was rich. 
But with this assurance grew the feeling of noblesse 
oblige, the conviction that it could not only afford 



THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 505 

but was in duty bound to take thought for the things 
of the spirit. The invention of the Hoe press led, 
about the same time, to the formation of the Press 
Association with hitherto undreamed of facihties for 
spreading a gospel. Discoveries in science fostered 
inherited tendencies to think bravely and truly along 
new lines. These in turn led back to the truth, lost 
and rediscovered time and again, that there is no es- 
cape from moral obligations. And all together con- 
spired to let loose that mighty flight of words for and 
against slavery that brought about the purging cata- 
clysm of civil war. 

The leaders of the three periods were as different as 
the issues they upheld. In the first period they were 
a group of gentlemen of fortune and position, essen- 
tially English in birth and training; who wore the lace 
ruffles and many of the prejudices of Europe. They 
revolted, not from hatred of England, or of monarchy, 
but from loyalty to an idea. Their foothold was only 
a narrow strip of land between the Alleghanies and the 
Atlantic. Standing firmly on this, with their backs 
to a wilderness, they looked regretfully eastward across 
the sea toward " home " and everything they had been 
taught to value, — everything, that is, except liberty. 

At the opening of the second period the frontier had 
already passed the barrier of the Alleghanies and was 
pushing toward the center of the continent. Before it 
came to an end the frontier had reached the desert, had 
leapt that again, and established a rude but virile civili- 
zation on the Pacific coast. The leaders were no longer 
men of wealth and inherited position. A younger gen- 
eration was living out ideals for which their elders had 
cheerfully given up whatever advantages inheritance 
had brought them. These younger men, especially 
those across the mountains, faced life under condi- 



5o6 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

tions of more than theoretical democracy. Mentally 
and physically a new type of citizen had been created. 
They and their followers looked toward the West rather 
than toward the East. Some of them, dazzled by the 
rapidly unfolding vision of national greatness, cher- 
ished a contempt for the Old World, which was far 
from being in the hearts of their elders. 

More than one of the older leaders had frankly be- 
lieved that sooner or later our political experiment 
must end in some form of monarchy. It is hard to 
conceive a surer means of political suicide, or a shorter 
road to oblivion, than to breathe such a doubt in the 
hearing of this generation of aggressively American 
patriots. In another way also they expressed the 
democratic change. The leaders of popular thought 
no longer sat in the Presidential chair. This interval 
of nearly forty years gave the country only one Presi- 
dent of strong personality; and he happened to be a 
dictator by nature, though a democrat by profession of 
faith. The real leaders were in Congress. Of the 
three foremost, one was the popular idol of his day; 
another the greatest orator the country has produced ; 
the third embodied sectional ambition in a superlative 
degree. Each wanted desperately to be President, yet 
not one of them achieved the coveted honor. Malice 
asserted that they desired it too much, — that even their 
friends feared they might barter opinion for place. 
May it not have been instead the working out of an 
obscure democratic instinct which prompted the coun- 
try to keep them close to itself, instead of setting them 
apart in an aloofness which even a republic wraps 
about its chief officer? 

In the decade between 1850 and i860 the type of 
leader again changed. The second period had been 
a carnival of oratory, which furnished at once the 



THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 507 

amusement and intellectual stimulus of the hour. 
There had been time for long speeches. People 
flocked to hear debates and listened willingly for hours, 
even for days at a stretch, to the great leaders or their 
clever imitators. 

Early in the third period the greatest leaders died. 
Even before it began the telegraph had been born; 
and with the telegraph came impatience of unnecessary 
words. At the same moment new leaders made their 
appearance, — men with something less of eloquence, 
something more of the fanatic in their makeup. In- 
tellectually they were a reversion toward the standard 
of the Puritans. They looked neither eastward toward 
Europe, nor westward toward the future, but inward, 
searching their own consciences for truth. Thus ora- 
tory suffered a partial eclipse, while the moral question 
gained in importance, to be argued in a new eloquence 
made up of fewer words and ever-increasing earnest- 
ness. 

These new leaders were to be found neither in the 
White House nor in Congress. They were scattered 
among the people ; each at first with only a small fol- 
lowing and a reputation made up far more of blame 
than of praise. Some of them were rich, but most of 
them were poor. Some were criminal in act, if noble 
in spirit. From such intimate and lowly beginnings 
their influence grew till it invaded Congress, and 
flowered at last in Lincoln, to find its culmination and 
its consecration in the White House. 

Each of the three periods develops its own climax. 
That of the first was war with England. 

In the second period there was war also, but it was 
only an incident in the unfolding drama; — a pictur- 
esque incident, whose easy success added one more 
item to the sum rolling up for final accounting. The 



5o8 OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

real victories of that period were over the powers of 
earth and air. The continent was measured; elusive 
forces were harnessed; doors to the wonder-house of 
the chemical laboratory were thrown open. The cli- 
max came in a wild orgy of invention and then the 
rush for Eldorado. 

The third period opened with the nagging dis- 
comfort of reawakened conscience. Moral responsi- 
bility dimmed the luster of new-found gold, and turned 
the enjoyment of riches to bitterness. The keenest 
minds spent themselves in futile endeavor to find a 
plan by which the slavery question could be settled to 
the liking of all concerned, — some way of reconciling 
God and Mammon. The Compromises of 1850 were 
attempted, rejoiced over as a solution, and broken al- 
most as soon as made. Then came the striking hour 
of costly retribution. 

In point of years this period is still very close to us. 
Our grandfathers and our fathers were the men called 
upon to work out its problems to their often surprising 
conclusions; yet already it is so remote from present 
habits of life and thought that it might be divided from 
us by centuries instead of having ended, so to speak, 
day before yesterday. 

Time is undoubtedly the greatest factor in history. 
With the lapse of years so many names dwindle to 
nothingness; so many dates drop out entirely. And 
Time does such astonishing things with the few that 
remain, playing with them as a master juggler plays 
with his balls ; exalting some and abasing others out 
of all semblance to their original state; changing all 
suddenly into something else; until finally individuals 
merge into types, — men and women who may or may 
not have drawn the breath of life, but who live immor- 
tal because they embody some force or tendency for 



THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 509 

which battle has been waged, and won or lost, in the 
course of the world's progress. History in this way 
takes on an epic quality, — ceases to be mere names and 
dates and becomes drama. 

In looking at far distant periods we see only a few 
bare facts, against a chilly horizon, so bleak and 
compellingly true that we seek instinctively to clothe 
them again in human flesh and frailty. To that end 
it is considered virtuous for history to borrow from 
archeology, even occasionally to filch from poetry. 

Coming down through the years facts multiply and 
the ethics of the game change. A poet's vision is still 
demanded of the historian, but a poet's license is de- 
nied him. His task becomes a labor of choice and 
rejection, principally the latter, — and woe betide him 
if he choose unwisely. 

Names and dates, coupled with deeds important or 
futile, swarm upon the printed page in smaller and 
ever smaller type as we approach our own day, until 
just as the vision is blinded, the type suddenly becomes 
very large again, the page expands to monstrous size, 
a smell of fresh ink assails our nostrils, and wakes us 
to the realization that we are reading, not history, but 
the morning's news which will be history before an- 
other dawn. 

The epic quality, — picturesqueness in a story worth 
the telling, — is perhaps the final and only passport to 
an enduring place in history. Of the picturesque, 
American history early had its full share. Viking 
voyages, for example, seen dimly through mists of the 
past, as their high-prowed, many-oared boats must 
have loomed through the fogs of our northern coast 
upon the eyes of astounded natives. Then the lonely 
figure of Columbus, grown old and shabby in pur- 
suit of his magnificent idea, towering over a hand- 



5IO OUR NATION IN THE BUILDING 

ful of mutinous sailors and forcing them on and on 
over unknown seas to prove him right. And the 
romance of Spanish conquest in the Southwest with 
its gallant, high-sounding names, its high animal 
spirits, its dare-devil bravery and its shocking cruelty. 
And the no less marvelous if soberer expeditions of 
black-robed priests from France, who carried loyalty 
to their God and their King through endless leagues of 
our wilderness to the portals of death and beyond. 

These are far enough in the past for Time to have 
worked his will with them. In comparison all that has 
happened since seems tame and colorless, even the 
Revolution with its high ideal of personal and religious 
liberty ; while the interval between that and the crimson 
stain of the Civil War, appears a mere jumble of 
names and dates. 

Perhaps the most difficult page of history for any 
generation to read with real sympathy is the one that 
lies immediately back of its own day, hidden by the 
shadow that falls forever between new and old. In 
this eclipse issues once vital look merely commonplace ; 
modes of thought once startling dull to self-evident 
truism ; the charm of novelty has departed forever 
from fashions and manners; and the glamour of the 
antique has not yet had time to gather in mellowing 
haze and convert it into a " period " more or less odd 
and picturesque. 

Such has been the fate of this period we have been 
considering; an eclipse in this case rendered doubly 
dark and doubly lasting because of the great interest 
of the Revolution that preceded it, and the poignant 
tragedy that came after. Yet in itself it was a won- 
derful time, in which a few struggling colonies became 
welded into a great nation and expanded to fill a vast 
continent. 



THE SWEEP OF THE YEARS 511 

No one can foretell Time's final verdict on this 
stretch of years. The Master-Juggler works in his 
own fashion and will not be hurried ; but no one can 
help guessing, and study of it fosters the belief that 
in picturesqueness it can hold its own with any of the 
centuries that went before. Not only our own peo- 
ple, but great principles and world-wide movements 
were involved. Kings and nations of Europe flashed 
into the story, effectively, if briefly. Napoleon's 
covetous glance rested a moment upon New World 
soil and added an empire, not to his own government, 
but to ours. Japan and China, hermit nations, old and 
nodding when the States of Europe were in the mak- 
ing, opened their doors and woke to new life at the 
friendly, imperative knocking of our young republic. 
Buccaneers and Barbary pirates and laws of gross 
injustice connected it with the Middle Ages. The 
crime of slavery, for which we were to pay later in 
blood, linked us inexorably with the iniquity of all 
time. Savages in our own woods brought us face to 
face with prehistoric man. The spectrum brought us 
in touch with distant stars, and anesthetics sent us 
out trustingly upon the edge of that great sea whose 
farther limit no man knows. Not content with the 
mere surface of the earth, the young nation invaded 
heaven and the deep places of land and sea, and forced 
them to yield up secrets hidden since the beginning of 
time. 

And all this happened in a little over fifty years, — 
a short time in which to bridge the gulf between an 
almost archaic past and the America we know to-day. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Abolition movement, 485-9- 
See Slavery. 

Adams, Abigail, 8, 26, 33-4, 36, 
141, 190, 267-8, 280. 

Adams, Hannah, 267-8. 

Adams, John, 11-23, 25-33, 27, 
41, 63-5, 68, 70, 141, 156, 
202, 268, 291-2, 296, 22^, 
412, 419-20, 434, 441. 

Adams, John Quincy, 87, 102-3, 
128, I 30-1, 133-42, 149-51, 
153, 155-6, 173, 178, 189, 
228, 249, 268, 314, 318, 336, 
339, 342, 346, 351, 354-5, 
389-90, 407, 418, 454, 488-9. 

Adams, Louisa Catharine, 
140-1, 280-1. 

Adams, Samuel, 289. 

Addams, Jane, 269. 

Alabama, 76, 250, 431. 

Alamo, 353. 

Alaska, 384, 401. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 468-g. 

Alcott, Louisa M., 468. 

Alien and Sedition Laws, 21, 
185, 189. 

Ampere, Jean Jacques, 210, 215, 
284, 313, 398-9. 

Amusements, 193, 195, 211, 213- 
20, 298, 428. 

Andre, Major John, 412. 

Argall, Samuel, 265. 

Arizona, 384. 

Arkansas, 249, 483. 

Army of the United States, 4, 
86, 8g-90, 96-102, 111-12, 
145-8, 246, 360-73. 

Arnold, Benedict, 412, 492. 

Art, 1 13-14, 211-13, 221, 275, 

Ays-7- 

Articles of Confederation, 3-5, 

53. 
Astor, John Jacob, 248, 385. 



Austria, 60, 130. 



Bainbricjge, William, 41, 43. 
Bancroft, George, 459, 464, 466. 
Banks 
First Bank of the United 

States, 85, 125. 
Second Bank of the United 
States, 126, 164-8, 339, 341. 
State Banks, 125', 168, 340, 

343- 
Tyler's veto of National 

Bank, 349. 
Barclay, Robt. H., 95. 
Barlow, Joel, 458. 
Barney, Joshua, 100. 
Barnum, Phineas T., 218-20. 
Barron, James, 199. 
Bayard, James A., 103. 
Bennett, James Gordon, 454-S, 

458, 461. 
Berkeley, William, 316. 
Blackhawk, 258-9. 
Blair, Francis P., 160. 
Blanchet, Francis Norbert, 

Father, 388. 
Blennerhasset, Harman, 71-2, 

73-5. 
Blitz, Antonio, 218. 
Boone, Daniel, 1 14-17, 162, 246, 

253, 292-3. 
Boston, 210, 291, 304, 457, 459, 

487, 488. 
Bowditch, Nathaniel, 411. 
Bowie, James, 353. 
Bradstreet, Anne Dudley, 267. 
Bragg, Braxton, 379. 
Bremer, Fredrika, 222, 284, 325, 

382, 469. 
Brent, Margaret, 266. 
Brown, Charles Brockden, 458. 
Brown, Jacob, General, 97. 



513 



514 



INDEX 



Brown, John of Ossawatomie, 

499. 
Brown, John of Virginia, 162. 
Bryant, William CuUen, 458-9, 

461, 463-4, 466. 
Buchanan, James, 161, 374, 456, 

498. 
Buckingham, James S., 191, 

461. 
Bulwer-Lytton, 463. 
Burr, Aaron, 22, 23, 25, 63-81, 

97-8, 139, 190, 224, 279, 287, 

292, 323. 
Burr, Theodosia, 69, 71, 73-4, 

^6, ^^, 80, z^2,- 

Butler, Benjamin, i8i. 

Cabinet, 21, 144, 148, 153, 158- 

60. 
Cabot, Sebastian, 46. 
Calhoun, John C, 124, 133, 149, 

157, 159, 166, 176-7, 178, 

179, 181, 192, 253, 350, 389- 

90, 424, 490-92, 506. 
Calhoun, Mrs. John C, 158. 
Calhoun, Madam, 283. 
Calhoun, Miss, 283. 
California, 357. 2,7Z-1^, 384, 

390-405, 406, 484, 490, 504. 
Calvert, Leonard Lord, 266. 
Camp meetings, 299-301. 
Canada, 66, 90-91, 94-97, 104-5, 

119, 246, 339, 350, 374, 

388-9. 
Canals, 113, 224, 227, 230-33, 

240-42. 
Canning, George, 131. 
Caroline, 264. 
Carroll, Chas., 244. 
Carroll, Henry, 105-7, 125. 
Carson, Kit, 375, 392. 
Cartwright, Peter, 302-3. 
Cass, Lewis, 359, 381. 
Castro, 376-7. 

Channing, Wm. Ellery, 301-2. 
Channing, William Henry, 488. 
Chevalier, Michel, 204, 242-3, 

.336. 
Children, 442-3, 446. 
Chilton, Mary, 265. 
Clark, William, 48-50, 116. 



Clinton, De Witt, 231. 

Cockburn, George Admiral, 
100. 

Cocke, William, 254. 

Clay, Henry, 75, 79, 86, 97, 
103-4, 114, 129, 133-5, 137- 
40, 148, 150, 155, 157-8, 164, 
165-7, 176-81, 196, 201, 232, 

340-41, 347-«, 349-51, 355, 
359, 380, 403, 410, 412, 418, 
421, 423, 440, 484-5, 490- 
_ 93, 496, 497, 499, 506. 

Clinton, George, 63. 

Cobb, Howell, 498. 

Colorado, 378. 

Columbia River, 384-5, 387, 392, 
438. 

Columbus, 509-10. 

Commerce, 46, 48, 54-6, 88, 91, 
109, 126, 227, 235, 294, 503. 

Colonization Society, 485-6, 
488-9, 491. 

Congress, 6-7, 21-3, 42, 48, 53, 
63, 86, 96, 109, 124, 126, 131, 
138, 141, 143-4, 147, 165, 
166-7, 172-200, 201, 211, 
214, 224-5, 241, 247, 250, 
280, 304, 321, 342, 349, 
354-5, 358-9, 361, 364, 390, 
415, 417, 419, 445, 451, 46s, 
477, 479, 483, 489-93, 496-7, 
50^7. 
House of Representatives, 
23-S, 129, 140, 141-2, 150, 
173-6, 329, 345, 354, 386, 
429. 
Senate, 70, 150, 157, 166-7, 
■ 176-80, 189-90, 341, 355, 
378, 382, 389, 417, 483-4, 
490-92, 498. 

Connecticut, 53, 487. 

Continental Congress, 3, 4, 53, 
247, 288-9. 

Constitution of the U. S., 23, 
58, 63, 182-3, 186, 190, 357, 
432, 452, 479- 

Convention of 1787, 4-5, 54, 
429. 

Cook, James, Captain, 384. 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 458, 
459, 463, 466. 



INDEX 



515 



Cortez, Hernando, 363, 365, 

367. 
Corwin, Thos., 359. 
Cotton, 109, 479-80, 504. 
Courts, 6, 25-6, 143, 147, 257, 

432, 498. 
Crandall, Prudence, 487. 
Crawford, William H., 132, 

1 33-5, 1 55, 412. 
Crockett, David, 152, 173-5, 

252, 353- 
Currency, 125-6, 165-6. 
Cushing, Caleb, 181. 
Custis, Nelly, 8. 

Dallas, Alexander James, 107. 

Dana, Richard H., 458. 

Davis, Jefferson, 259, 365, 379, 

498. 
Decatur, Stephen, Admiral, 43- 

45, 199. 
Dale, Richard, Commodore, 42. 
Dearborn, Benjamin, 241. 
Declaration of Independence, 

28, 30, 209-10, 244, 259, 268, 

427, 429. 
Delaware, 25, 104. 
Democratic Republicans. See 

Political Parties. 
Democratic Party. See Politi- 
cal Parties. 
De Soto, Hernando, 52. 
De Tocqueville, 123, 176, 206, 

210, 250-2, 265, 290, 320, 

426, 449- 
Dickens, Charles, 196, 208, 254, 

455, 464-5. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 182, 418, 

493, 495-9- 
Drake, Francis, Sir, 384. 
Dubourg, Abbe, 147. 
Duche, Rev. Mr., 289. 
Duels, 64, 69, 138-9, 197-9, 450. 

Eastern States, 3, 54, 56, 72, 
74, 118, 121, 152, 185, 243, 
249, 316-17, 386, 401, 469- 
70, 503, 506. 

Eaton, John Henry, Gen., 158. 

Edmonston family, 494. 

Education, 267-9, 273-5, 278, 



283-4, 294-5, 314-25, 426, 
428, 436, 443, 451, 482, 487. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 67. 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 29, 41, 433. 

Embargo, 38, 85, 91, 126. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 459, 
466-7, 469-70. 

Emigration, 55, 1 19-21, 142, 
249, 270. 

England, 5, 13, 18, 37-8, 53, 59- 
61, 77-9, 85-95, 9&-100, 
102-5, 118, 125-6, 130-31, 
14s, 248, 261-2, 289, 307, 
332, 339, 351, 374, 384, 387, 
389, 426, 449, 457, 463, 505. 

'Equality, 132-3, 204-7. 

Era of Good Feeling, 128-9. 

Erie Canal, 113, 121, 136, 230- 
33, 240-41, 462. 

Evans, Oliver, 240-41. 

Everett, Edward, 136. 

Explorations, Early American, 
46-7, 52, 109, 510. 

Fannin, 353. 

Federal Government, 5, 6, il, 
125. 

Field, Cyrus, 456. 

Fillmore, Millard, 284, 313, 383. 

Fillmore, Miss, 285, 313. 

Florida, 53, 60, 62, 74, 145, 
148-9, 222, 249, 250, 258, 
288, 351. 

Forrest, Edwin, 488. 

France, 5, 13, 18, 20, 37, 46, 52, 
57-62, 74, 79, 85, 88, 89, 
no, 118, 130, 248, 288, 374, 
388, 426, 449, 503, 510. 

Franchise, 314-15, 429-31, 452. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 10, 14, 55, 
64, III, 292, 297, 303, 325, 
326, 331, 408, 430, 457, 476. 

Fremont, John C, 375-7, 388, 
392, 418. 

French Revolution, 18, 57, 120. 

Fugitive Slave Law, 490, 493-6. 

Fulton, Robert, 233-4, 476. 



Gadsden Purchase, 384. 
Gales, Joseph, 106-7. 
Gallatin, Albert, 103. 



5i6 



INDEX 



Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins, 
.443- . 

Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 409-10. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 169, 
486-7, 495. 

Georgia, 53, 250, 297, 443. 

Genet, Edmond Charles, 279. 

Giddings, Joshua R., 489. 

Gladwyn, Major, 264. 

Gold, Discovery of, in Cali- 
fornia, 392-5. 

Goodyear, Charles, 327-8. 

Gore, Christopher, 180. 

Grant, U. S., 2^^, 365, 371, ^72, 
378-9. 

Gray, Robert, Captain, 48, 384. 

Greeley, Horace, 179, 182, 344, 
395, 397, 459, 470. 

Hahnemann, C. F. S., 2>33- 

Haiti, 59, 138. 

Hale, Mrs. Sarah Joseph, 420. 

Hall, Basil, 209-10. 

Halleck, Fitz Greene, 458. 

Hamilton, Alexander, lo-ii, 

13, 17, 20, 21, 22-3, 32, 54, 

64-6, 68-70, 78, 82, 85, no, 

117, 125, 172, 292, 429. 
Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler, 

64. 
Hamilton, James, 155, 156. 
Harris, Martin, 305-6. 
Harrison, William Henry, 97, 

98, 172, 249, 261-2, 341-9, 

355, 381, 418, 424. 
Harte, Bret, 400. 
Hartford Convention, 125, 185. 
Harvey, William, 332. 
Hassler, Ferdinand R., 330-1. 
Hawley, Jesse, 231. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 459, 

466, 467. 
Hay. John, 239. 
Hayne, Robert Young, 185-6, 

187, 421, 453. 
Henry, Joseph, 329. 
Henry, Patrick, 173. 
Herschel, John, Sir, 461. 
Hoe, Richard, 456. 
Holidays, American, 121-2, 

419-20. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 459, 

460. 



Holy Alliance, 130-1, 138. 

Hospitals, 442. 

Houston, Sam, 175, 198, 352-4, 

358. 
Hull, Isaac, 88, 92. 
Hull, William, 88, 94, 97. 
Huntington, Collis P., 396. 
Hutchinson, Anne, 266. 
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 320. 

Illinois, 104, 309, 317, 431, 462, 

488, 497. 
[Indiana, 104, 240, 342, 431. 
Indians, 48, 50-1, 53, 98, 104, 

III, 113, 115-17, 121, 144, 

148, 173-4, 245-63, 264-5, 

307, 342, 352, 357, 374, 385, 

386-7, 391, 393, 423, 441, 

450, 502-3, 511. 
Internal Improvements, 129, 

167-8. 
Invention, 201, 217-18, 325-31, 

455-7, 473, 476-7, 479-8o, 

504, 505, 508. 
Iowa, 121, 388. 
Irving, Washington, 83, 458, 

459, 463, 464, 466, 467. 

Jackson, Andrew, 71, 74, 76, 80, 
97-8, 102, 128-9, 133-6, 139- 
40, 143-72, 175, 185-9, 234, 
249-50, 259, 278, 282-3, 
293, 2,2,3, 22,7, 339, 341-2, 
351, 354-5, 418, 443-4, 448, 
455- 

Jackson, Mrs. Andrew, 153, 
158, 282-3, 288, 293. 

Jackson, Charles Thomas, Dr., 
222- 

Japan, 405. 

Jay, John, 32, 41, 54, 288-9, 
432-3. 

Jenner, Edward, 332. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 10, 11, 16- 
17, 19, 23-32, 34-42, 46, 48, 
57-8, 60, 62-1, 68-9, 71-2, 
75-7, 79, 82, 85, 87, 96, 99, 
no, 124, 128, 130, 143, 156, 
177, 187, 191, 222, 225, 
248-9, 279, 293, 304, 320-21, 
331, 357, 408. 412-16, 419, 
429-32, 448, 465-6, 485-6. 



INDEX 



517 



Johnson, Richard M., 192, 262, 
340, 445- 

Kansas, 121, 405, 496, 498. 
Kearney, Philip, 375. 
Kemble, Fanny, 290, 301. 
Kendall, Amos, 160-63, 191-2, 

202, 443. 
Kentucky, 56, 75, in, 1 13-16, 

177, 380, 431, 488. 
Kentucky Resolutions, 185. 
Keokuk, 256, 258. 
Key, Francis Scott, 102. 
Knox, Henry, General, 6, 11, 

68. 
Kossuth, Louis, 409. 
Kremer, George, 175, 176. 

Labor, 206, 278, 289, 321, 338, 

403, 446, 479-S2. 
Lafayette, 118, 150, 162, 269, 

291, 296, 406, 410-15, 439- 

41, 461, 464, 487. 
Lardner, Dionysius, 234. 
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 

268. 
La Salle, Robert Cavelier de, 

52. 
Lawrence, James, 421. 
Ledyard, John, 47-8. 
Lee, Daniel, 386. 
Lee, Jason, 386, 388. 
Lee, Robert E., 379. 
L'Enfant, Pierre Charles, 33, 

34- 
Lewis, Meriwether, 48-51, 116. 
Lewis, WiUiam B., Major, 150, 

160. 
Lewis and Clark Expedition, 

39,48-51,116,384-385- 
Lincoln, Abraham, 177, 204, 

235, 244, 329, 331, 344, 362, 

417-18, 422, 462, 486, 497, 

507. 
Lincoln, Benjamin, 503. 
Lind, Jenny, 219-21, 409. 
Literature, 267, 274, 457-70, 

493- 
Livingston, Robert R., 57-60, 

61, 233-4, 476. 
Locke, Richard Adams, 461. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 459, 

466. 



Louis XV, 324. 

Louisiana, 30, 39, 47, 51, 52, 

57, 59-62, 87, 116, 127, 130, 

222, 248, 350-1, 357, 384, 

431, 480. 
Lovejoy, Elijah P., 488. 
Lovejoy, Owen, 4^. 
Lowell, James Russell, 359, 

460, 

McCulloch, Hugh, 142. 
McLaughlin, Dr., 387, 388. 
Madison, Dolly, 36, 83, 84-5, 

loi, 107, 193, 280, 415. 
Madison, James, 32, 82-6, 96-7, 

100-102, 106-7, 126-28, 156, 

280, 292, 412, 418, 433, 485, 

500. 
Madison, Madam, 280. 
Maine, 104, 239, 350, 389, 431, 

484. 
Mann, Horace, 322, 324, 443. 
Mansfield, Arabella, 266. 
Manufactures, 119, 126, 227, 

278, 321, S03-4. 
Marat, Jean Paul, 449. 
Marbois, Frangois, 60. 
Marie Antoinette, 410. 
Marshall, James W., 393-4. 
Marshall, John, 39, 64, 76, 177, 

433-5, 436, 485- 
Martineau, Harriet, 160, 191, 

207, 224, 290, 417-18, 463-4, 

500. 
Maryland, 225, 239, 266. 
Mason, James M., 491. 
Massachusetts, 53, 89, 105, 185, 

290, 315, 492. 
Medicine, 266, 331-4, 450. 
Mexico, 72-4, 78, 80, 142, 350- 

56, 358, 360-80, 390, 391, 

394, 484, 490. 
Michigan, 97, 104, 250. 
Mississippi, 75, 250, 317, 351. 
Mississippi River, 6, 47-8, 52-7, 

86, 102, 104, 109-10, 1 12-13, 

121, 224, 231, 234-6, 238- 

40, 246, 248-51, 254-5, 

257-8, 288, 351, 503. 
Missouri, 116, 249, 308-9, 391, 

43 1, _ 483-4- 
Missouri Compromise, 129, 351, 

483-5, 491, 495-8. 



5i8 



INDEX 



Monroe, Elizabeth, Mrs., 140, 
280. 

Monroe, James, 58, 59, 60, 61, 
85, 86, 127, 128-33, 136, 140, 
14&-9, 156, 199, 222, 249, 

407-9, 4 TO, 418. 

Monroe Doctrine, 129-32, 496. 
Montgomery, Richard, Gen., 

411. 
Mormons, 305-12, 375, 392. 
Morris, Gouverneur, no, 222, 

230, 22,2,- 
Morse, Samuel F. B., 328, 456, 

476-7. 
Morton, Wm. Thomas Green, 

m. 
Motley, John Lothrop, 466-7. 
Mott, Lucretia, 277. 
Music, 213, 216, 219-21, 421. 



Napier, Charles, Sir., 104. 

Napoleon, 13, 57, 59-61, 78, 87, 
120, 130, 174, 351, 511. 

Navy, U. S., 39-45, 7^, 86, 89- 
96. 

Nebraska, 405, 496. 

Negroes, 55, 95, 126, 136, 146, 
181, 191, 322, 380-1, 430, 
437, 450, 472, 481-2. 

Nevada, 375, 378. 

New England, 3, 38, 47, 56, 91, 
109, 113, 121-2, 126, 133, 
168, 202-3, 210, 231, 239, 
284, 288-9, 291, 295, 322, 
359, 403-4, 428-9, 431, 462, 
466-7, 469, 503. 

New Hampshire, 407, 431, 444. 

New Jersey, 70, 241, 431, 487. 

New Mexico, 378, 384, 392. 

New Orleans, 53, 55, 57-60, 
71-4, 91, 102, 135, 145-8, 
198, 216, 231, 234-5, 240, 
243, 288, 304, 324, 414, 465. 

Newspapers, 15 1-2, 241-2, 254, 
268, 344, 363, 394-S, 448- 
57, 460-63, 477, 486, 488, 
493, 495, 50s, 509- 

New York, 53, 70, 155, 239, 241, 
ZZ7, 403, 423, 430, 431, 442, 
444-5- 

New York City, 121-2, 123, 191, 
208-9, 210, 216, 231, 295, 



337, 394, 438-9, 442, 456, 

459, 462-4, 466. 
Nicholson, Mrs., 279. 
Nolan, Philip, 350-1. 
Non-Intercourse Act, 85-6. 
North, 1 12-13, 118, 177, 184, 

198, 283, 307, 316, 352, 359, 

428, 430, 451, 479, 483-4, 

486-8, 490-4, 503. 
North Carolina, 53, 112, 239, 

288, 431, 487. 
Northwest, 97, 248, 355, 357, 

374, 389, 496, 498. 
Northwest Territory, 53-4, 117, 

342, 357. 
Nullification, 164-5, 168, 179, 

184-90, 341, 421, 484, 486, 



Ogle, Charles, 345. 

Ohio, 104, 224, 308, 344-5, 488. 

Ohio River, 55, 112-3, 143, 

224-5, 231, 236, 239-40, 247, 

260, 483. 
O'Neil, Peggy, 158-9, 283. 
Ordinance of 1787, 483. 
Oregon, 39, 47, 51, 355, 357, 

376, 386, 387-92, 394, 438, 

498. 
Osceola, 258. 
Osgood, Samuel, 279. 
Otis, James, 268. 

Paine, Thomas, 19, 28. 
Pakenham, Edward, Sir, 102, 

146. 
Panama, 138, 396. 
Panic of 1837, 337-9, 444. 
Parker, Theodore, 469, 495. 
Parkman, Francis, 466. 
Penn, William, 437. 
Pennsylvania, 112, 239, 241, 

246, 321, 324, 437, 446. 
Perry, M. C, 405. 
Perry, Oliver Hazard, 95, 262, 

405. 
Peter, Mrs., 193. 
Philadelphia, 4, 22, 22,, S^, I43, 

209, 214, 231, 241-3, 287, 

290, 295, 297, 334, 394, 421, 

439, 449, 457, 459, 463-4, 

485. 488. 
Philanthropy, 278, 438-9. 



INDEX 



519 



Pierce, Franklin, 496. 
Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, 

16, 21. 

Pineda, Alonzo de, 52. 
Pioneers, 235, 422-4, 449. 
Pocahontas, 173, 265. 
Poe, Ed^ar Allen, 459, 460, 466. 
Political Parties, 151-3, 295-6, 
304, 328, 488-9, 497-8. 
Anti-Masonic, 141, 166, 304. 
Democratic, 164, 166, 170, 
309, 340-41, 343, 346, 349- 
50, 355, 359, 361, 389, 427, 
493. 
Democratic-Republican, 11- 
12, 17, 19, 22, 26, 30, 38-9, 
56, 65, 68, 82, 124, 128, 427. 
Federalist, 11-12, 19-23, 26, 
30, 38, 56, 58, 65, 11, 82, 109- 
10, 124-5, 128, 193-4- 
Native American, 488. 
Republican, 497-9. 
Whig, 164, 170, 194, 309, 340- 
41, 343-50, 355, 359-62, 421, 
493- 
Young Republican, 86-7, 90, 
96, 127. 
Polk, James K., 328, 355, 358, 

361, 366, 369, 374, 384. 
Pontiac, 264. 
Powers, Hiram, 217. 
Preftble, Edward, Commodore, 

42. 
IPrescott, William H., 466-7. 
Priestley, Joseph, 28. 
Prisons, 231, 243, 436-7, 443-^- 
Prussia, 130. 
Public Lands, 54, 109-13, 116- 

17, 121. 
Punishments, 436-8, 446, 482. 

Quincy, Josiah, 163. 

Quincy, Josiah, Jr., 163-4, I93- 

4, 196-7, 336, 411-12. 
Quitman, John Anthony, 365. 

Railroads, 222, 227, 240-44, 284. 
Randolph, Edmund, 8, 11. 
Randolph, John, 15, 64, 138-9, 
173, 176, 189, 199, 292, 417, 

485, 494. 
Reed, Thomas B., 417. 
Reform, 275-7, 426-47, 484. 



Religion, 192, 195, 209, 214, 245, 
252, 287-312, 317, 318, 
453-4, 467-8, 472-5, 495. 

Reynolds, John P., 379. 

Rhode Island, 4, 89, 431. 

Rigdon, Sidney, 306-7. 

Roads, 9, 39, 95, 116, 119, 222- 
31, 240, 271-2, 440. 

Rodders, John, Commodore, 90. 

Roelandsen, Adam, 316. 

Rolfe, John, 265. 

Ross, Betsey, 269-70. 

Royall, Ann, 454. 

Rumsey, James, 233. 

Rush, Benjamin, Dr., 26, 442. 

Russell, Emily, 494. 

Russell, Jonathan, 103. 

Russia, 47-8, 88, 102-3, 130-31, 
384-5. 

Sacajawea, 50, 51, 265. 

Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de, 

353-4, 358-9, 365-71, ZIZ. 

Savarin, Brillat, 287. 

Saxe Weimar, 215, 229, 236-7, 
287, 325, 421. 

Schools, 113, 118, 274, 294-5, 
314-25, 443, 451. 

Science, 113, 472-5, 505, 5o8. 

Scott, Dred, 430, 498. 

Scott, Walter, 228, 463. 

Scott, Winfield, 35, 97, 98-9, 
140, 144, 147-8, 172, 189, 
192, 254-7, 336-7, 341-2, 
365-73, 379-80, 381-2, 416, 
424. 

Secession, 47, 119, 125. 

Sedgwick, Catharine Maria, 
463. 

Sevier, John, iii, 

Shakespeare, 463, 488. 

Sherman, William T., 379. 

Slavery, 41, 121-2, 129, 178, 
184-5, 2y(>-T, 304, 318, 
351-2, 359, 362, 382, 405, 
452, 464, 470, 478-99, 501, 
505, 508. 

Smith, John, Capt., 265. 

Sloat, John Drake, Commodore, 

Smith, Joseph, 305-11. 
Smith, Sydney, 463. 
Smithson, James, 329. 



520 



INDEX 



Southern States, 3, 46, 75, 98, 
109, 1 12-13, 118, 126, 133, 
177, 184, 185, 198, 202, 229- 
30, 248, 283-4, 316-18, 324, 
338, 341, 350, 359, 381, 386, 
428, 430-1, 451, 479, 481, 
483, 484-s, 486-8, 490, 492- 
5, 498, 503. 

South America, 129, 130, 138. 

South Carolina, 25, 112, 185, 
188, 239, 288, 482, 488. 

Southey, Robert, 287. 

Southwest, ^2, 74, 247, 351-2, 

355, 357, 389, 510- 

Spain, 46, 52-7, 62, 72, 74, 88, 
98, 116, 1 18-19, 130, 145, 
148-9, 248-9, 258, 288, 350- 
51, 384, 390-91, 503, 510. 

Spanish RepubHcs, 129-31. 

Spaulding, H. H., 387. 

Spaulding, Solomon, 307. 

Speculation, 204. 

Spofford, Ainsworth R., 469. 

Stackelburg, Baron, 193. 

Stagecoach, 222, 224, 228-30. 

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 277. 

States' Rights, 125, i83-<X', 481, 
501. See Nullification. 

Steamboats, 92, 233-40. 

Stevens, John, 240-41. 

St. Louis, 288, 310. 

Stockton, Robt. Field, Com- 
modore, 2>17- 

Story, Joseph, 322. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 459, 

493. 
Stuart, Gilbert, 8. 
Stuart, James, 202. 

Talleyrand, 20, 58-61, 65, 78, 

336. 
Tammany, 68, 139. 
Taney, Roger B., 166, 430. 
Tariff, 126, 129, 138-9, 185, 188. 
Taylor, Bayard, 219. 
Taylor, Father, 302. 
Taylor, Zachary, 360-68, 379- 

83, 418, 424. 
Tecumseh, 98, 144, 249, 259-62, 

342, 441, 445. 
Temperance, 195-6, 211, 228, 

22,"], 260, 428, 439-42. 
Tennessee, 254, 352. 



Texas, 'jz, 142, 350-56, 357-9, 

378, 384, 386, 484, 490, 504. 
Theaters, 195, 211, 213-17, 488. 
Thomas, George H., 379. 
Thoreau, Henry IDavid, 460, 

468. 
Tippecanoe, 261-3, 342. 
Trafalgar, ZT- 

Treasury, U. S., 339-40, 343. 
Treaty of Ghent, 89, 102-8, 125, 

. 385, 503. 
Tripoli, war with. See War. 
Trist, Nicholas P., 369, 372. 
Trollope, Mrs., 152, 203-4, 217, 

236, 254, 27s, 295, 481. 
Tyler, John, 281-82, 341, 348- 

50, 355-6, 389, 464- 
Tyler, Julia, Mrs., 281-2. 
Tyler, Letitia, Mrs., 281. 

Underground Railway, 494-5. 
Ursuline Nuns, 73-4, 147, 324. 
Utah, 311-12, 378. 

Van Buren, Martin, 152, 155, 
158-9, 167, 170-71, 188, 283, 
336-7, 339-40, 345-6, 354-5, 
403, 419, 444, 455. 

Vancouver, George, 384. 

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 476. 

Van Rensselaer, 140, 

Vermont, 429, 431, 

Victoria, Queen, 456. 

Virginia, 4, 35, 109, 112, 115', 
. 127, 481, 503. 

Virginia Resolutions, 185, 187. 

Walker, Thomas, Dr., iii. 
Walpole, Horace, 454. 
War, Civil, 378, 422, 427-8, 432, 
467, 504, 510. 
Mexican, Z17-'JZ, 390, 405, 

484, 497, 504, 507- 
of 1812, 45, 85-108, 113, 119, 
124-5, 145. ^^7, 240, 294, 
343, 352, 364, 406, 421, 449, 
459, 507. 
Revolutionary, 3, 451, 487, 

501-2, 510. 
Tripoli, 39-45, 86, 92, 511. 
Warren, Mercy, 268. 
Wasliington City, 22, 24, 33-4, 
72, ioa-102, 104-7, 125, 



W 56 



INDEX 



521 



153-4, '^75> 190-200, 229, 

283, 325, 347-^, 412, 463. 
496. 

Washington, George, S-iS. I7- 
19, 21-2, 28, 32-3, 37, 41, 
63-7, 100, 143, 156, 172, 181, 
190, 222, 233, 247, 269-70, 
291, 342, 407-8, 412, 416, 
418, 4I9--20, 424, 430, 492, 
503. 

Washington, Martha, 8, 33, 279. 

Washington, Mary, 269, 286. 

Wayne, Anthony, Gen., 249, 
253-4, 412. 

Webster, Daniel, 155, 157, 166, 
172, 176, 179-83, 196-7, 328, 
340, 347, 350, 355, 382, 389, 
414, 418, 421, 424, 453, 476, 
487, 490, 492, 506. 

Webster, Noah, 457-8. 

Wellington, Duke of, 370. 

Wells, Horace, Dr., 333. 

West, 3-4, 46-58, 62, 72, 74, 
I 10-123, 133, 142, 152, 
172-5, 185, 210, 224, 231, 
234-40, 243, 247, 270-73, 

284, 307, 316-18, 384-405, 
430, 431, 451-2, 469-70, 503, 
506. 



West Indies, 37. 
West Point, 321, 420. 
Whigs. See Political Parties. 
Whisky Insurrection, 11. 
Whitefield, George, 297. 
Whitman, Marcus, 386-7. 
Whitney, Eli, 331, 479-80. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 168, 

211, 459, 466, 487. 
Wilkinson, James, Gen., 72-3, 

75, 97- 
Willard, Emma Hart, 324. 
Wilmot Proviso, 362, 497. 
Wilson, Henry, 478. 
Winthrop, Robert C., 381. 
Wisconsin, 104. 
Wise, Henry A., 160-61, 330. 
Woman's Rights Movement, 

276-8. 
Worth, William J., Gen., 365. 
Wright, Silas, 328. 
Wythe, George, 177, 268. 
Women, 36, 209, 213, 236, 253, 

264-86, 295, 323-5, 430-31, 

442, 444, 446. 

X.Y.Z. Affair, 20, 21, 58, 420. 
Young, Brigham, 310-11. 




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